What was Romanticism?
Romanticism was a big change in literature, art and music. It started in the late 1700s in Germany and Britain and spread across Europe and the Americas until about 1850.
It was a reaction to two things:
- The Enlightenment (Age of Reason), which trusted logic, science and fixed rules of good taste (Classicism).
- The Industrial Revolution, which filled towns with smoke, noise and hard factory work.
Before full Romanticism came a mood called sensibility and the German Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress): writing full of tears, tender feelings and passion.
Main features
- Nature: a source of peace, wisdom and spiritual feeling. Wild nature gives the sublime: beauty mixed with awe and fear.
- Emotion: feelings, even sadness and melancholy, are a true guide.
- The individual: the lonely hero, the rebel, the artist as a genius who follows inspiration.
- Imagination: dreams, the mysterious, the supernatural, the exotic.
- The past: the Middle Ages, ruins, castles, legends, instead of Greek and Roman models.
- Folk culture and nation: tales, songs and the spoken language of ordinary people. This helped national movements.
- Freedom of form: breaking old rules, mixing genres.
Romantic literature
Poetry was the leading form. In England, Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798) used everyday words. Byron, Shelley and Keats followed. In Germany, Goethe and Schiller; in Poland, Adam Mickiewicz; in Russia, Pushkin; in Romania, Mihai Eminescu (late Romantic); in France, Victor Hugo and Lamartine.
Novels and tales: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), Walter Scott's historical novels, Hugo's novels, the Brothers Grimm's collected folk tales, and gothic novels full of mystery.
Typical genres: the lyric poem, the ballad (a story in verse), the historical novel, the romantic drama.
Romantic painting and music
Painting: J. M. W. Turner painted blazing storms and sea light; Caspar David Friedrich painted lone figures before mountains and fog; Eugène Delacroix used bold colour and drama; John Constable painted the quiet countryside.
Music: melodies became more emotional and forms freer. Late Beethoven bridges Classical and Romantic. Romantic composers include Schubert (art songs, Lieder), Chopin (piano pieces such as nocturnes), Schumann, Liszt, and later Wagner and Tchaikovsky. Typical genres: the art song, the character piece for piano, the symphonic poem that tells a story, and opera. Many used folk tunes to express national feeling.
Romanticism vs Classicism
Classicism: reason, order, balance, clear rules, Greek and Roman models, the universal.
Romanticism: feeling, freedom, wildness, breaking rules, the past and folk culture, the personal.
After about 1850, Realism turned from dreams to show everyday life as it is, but Romantic ideas about nature and feeling still shape books, songs and films today.
Try it
In free play, set the slider halfway. Which parts of the scene show reason, and which show feeling? At home, write four lines about a place in nature that moves you. Use your senses and your feelings, not facts. Then listen to a short Chopin nocturne and note one feeling it gives you.
Key formulas and definitions
- Time: about 1780–1850 (late 18th to mid 19th century)
- Reaction against: Enlightenment rules + Industrial Revolution
- Features: nature (sublime) · emotion · individual · imagination · past · folk and nation · free form
- Literature: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Goethe, Pushkin, Mickiewicz, Hugo, Mary Shelley
- Painting: Turner, Friedrich, Delacroix · Music: Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt
- Classicism = reason, order · Romanticism = feeling, freedom
Worked examples
1. A poem describes a storm over mountains and says the poet felt both terror and wonder. Which Romantic idea is this?
The sublime: nature so vast and powerful it causes awe mixed with fear.
2. Why did Romantic writers collect folk songs and tales?
They believed the true spirit of a people lived in its ordinary folk culture and language. This also strengthened national feeling.
3. Compare a Classical temple painting and Friedrich's lone figure before fog.
The temple shows order, balance and reason (Classicism). The lone figure shows the individual, wild nature and feeling (Romanticism).
Common mistakes
- Thinking 'romantic' here means love stories only. Romanticism is about feeling, nature and freedom in general.
- Mixing up the order: the Enlightenment came first; Romanticism reacted against it.
- Calling all 19th-century writers Romantic. After about 1850, Realism became the main style.
- Believing Romantics hated all reason. They wanted feeling and imagination beside reason, not only reason.