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