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Romanticism and the Arts
Visual Art, Music, Literature
Dates Literature and visual
art: end of 18th century to middle of 19th century
Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge) 1798
Music: all of 19th century
Romantic assumptions Reaction against Classical/Neo-classical
movement Romantic not necessarily tied to “love” Revolutionary impulse—so many initially
supported French Revolution
Eugene Delacroix The Death of Sardanapalus
Neo-classical Romantic
Characteristics of Romantic art Intended to move and
inspire, not teach Vast, unlimited space in
the background Dramatic, restless, moody Spontaneous, does not
look planned Expressive
Friedrich’s Wanderer
Above the Sea of Fog
Tristesse by Frederic Chopin
Characteristics of Romantic Music Reaching, soaring quality—unattainable goal Lyricism (not worried about balanced phrases) Expressing individual feelings Break from patronage system Musician as artist—and specialist Reach a larger audience (concert halls), but they
probably won’t understand what the musician means
Two different conceptions of music
Classical:“Music is an innocent luxury, unnecessary,
indeed, to our existence, but a great improvement and gratification of the sense of hearing. Music is the art of pleasing by the succession and combination of agreeable sounds.”
-Charles Burney
Romantic:“Music embodies feeling without forcing it to
contend and combine with thought. . . . If music has one advantage over the other media, it owes this to its supreme capacity to make each inner impulse audible without the assistance of reason.”
-Franz Liszt
Characteristics of Romantic Literature
The Self as central Romantic hero
Emotion “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings”—Wordsworth Lyric
Romantic literature (cont.)
Nature Burke: The Sublime and the Beautiful
John Constable The Hay Wain Joseph Wright An Eruption of Vesuvius, Seen from Portici
Romantic literature (cont.)
Non-traditional Christianity (“Nothing, not God, is greater to one than oneself is”—Whitman)
Opening up of poetic forms; not poetic diction
Supernatural/gothic
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