Characteristics of Romanticism: origin, features, works and authors

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Romanticism was an aesthetic and cultural hurricane that forever changed our way of understanding art and modern sensibility, a true revolution of the subjective which first caught on in Europe and, shortly after, in America.

Born between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, he reacted vigorously against the order and coldness of the neoclassicism and the certainties of the Enlightenment; in their place he placed the emotional impulse, the imagination, the myth, the nostalgia for the past and the creative freedom without academic ties.

What is Romanticism?

Romanticism is understood as a cultural, artistic and literary movement which advocates the supremacy of feeling, intuition and individual experience, distancing itself from the idea that reason explains everything.

From England and Germany, and very soon also France, its echoes spread throughout the continent and crossed the Atlantic: in literature, music, painting and architecture new forms were sought, nature was rediscovered as a mirror of the soul and the door was opened to sublime, to the ineffable that moves even when it is disturbing or terrible.

Origin, etymology and expansion

On the philological level, the adjective "Romantic" is related to the French romantique, derived from roman (novel), a term linked to texts in the Romance language, and became popular in the 18th century in the Anglo-Saxon world with the meaning of "picturesque" or "sentimental"; this is attested by James Boswell in 1768, whose mentions anticipate a sensibility that would later crystallize in romantic versus klassisch in Germany.

Modern criticism, with voices such as René Wellek, stressed that "Romantic" began as a way of thinking and feeling rather than a closed style; Friedrich Schlegel used the term at the end of the 18th century for a "progressive universal poetry", and in 1819 "Romantiker" appeared as the name of the school, while in Spain "Romancesque" and "Romantic" coexisted until the latter stabilized towards 1818.

The philosophical and literary beginning draws on the German movement "Sturm und Drang» (Storm and Impetus), which between 1767 and 1785 rebelled against rationalism; shortly afterwards, the «Lyrical Ballads» of Wordsworth and Coleridge (1798) reinforced a climate favorable to the imagination, which dialogued with the historical convulsions of the time, among them the French Revolution and the readjustment of Napoleonic Europe.

Its expansion was rapid: in France names such as Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo or Théophile Gautier were associated; in the Germanic sphere Goethe, Novalis, Schelling or Fichte shone; in the Anglo-Saxon world Byron, Keats or Mary Shelley; in the United States, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and Edgar Allan Poe left their mark; and in Spain, Larra, Espronceda, Bécquer and the circle of gatherings such as El Parnasillo in Madrid or the Arsenal in Paris stood out, with Russian echoes in the Society of Arzamas.

Essential features and characteristics

The romantic ideal is built in opposition to neoclassical academicism and its faith in order and norm, promoting an aesthetic of intensity: subjectivity, emotion, imagination and formal freedom.

• Rejection of Neoclassicism and Enlightenment rationalism: molds are broken, rules are relativized, and unprecedented expressive solutions are pursued.
• Exaltation of feelings and individual experience: the "I" becomes the driving force of creation.
• Rebellion against norms: Aristotle's "three unities" are challenged, prose and verse are mixed, and polymetry appears in the drama.
• Cult of the self and individualism: the artist emancipates himself from patronage and asserts himself as genius unique and unrepeatable, often misunderstood.
• Originality as the supreme criterion: novelty is important over imitation of the classical past.
• The sublime versus classical beauty: beauty in the tremendous, the stormy, and the overwhelming.
• Fantasy, dreams and the supernatural: the rise of dreams, visions and ghostly atmospheres.
• Historical nostalgia: an idealized view of the Middle Ages and certain national pasts.
• Dialogue with the Baroque: a taste for compositional freedom, effect and exuberance.
• Exoticism and primitivism: orientalism and idealization of the American Indian as a "noble savage."
• Interest in popular culture: collection of legends, romances, ballads, and proverbs; focus on folklore.
• Nationalism: the “collective self” as a historical and cultural identity, with vernacular languages ​​in the foreground.
• Favorite themes: love, passion, death, destiny, nature as a metaphor for the soul, religion and Nordic mythologies, medievalism, orientalism.
• Ethical and political idealism: commitment to the causes of his time and, at times, reactionary tendencies.
• Open work: value of the unfinished, the imperfect and the unfinished as a gesture of freedom.

In parallel, a rediscovery of nature is consolidated: the landscape ceases to be a backdrop to become a symbolic protagonist; rough seas, misty mountains or shady forests function as projections of moods.

Recurring themes of Romanticism

Romantic writers and artists turned to a wide repertoire of reasons which, however, share the same emotional vibration and imaginative, with special attention to what goes beyond reason and the historical forces of its time.

• Love, passion, and overwhelming emotion; the wound of disappointment and melancholy.
• The nation, history, and the people; reviving traditions, legends, and national symbols.
• Religion, Norse mythologies, and spirituality; the mysterious and the sacred.
• The medieval fantasy imagination: castles, ruins, creatures and chivalry.
• Orientalism and the Native American world as alternative horizons.
• Death (with special focus on suicide) as an existential limit and poetic theme.
• Untamed nature as a metaphor for the inner world and the conflict of the "I."
• The rebellious, tragic and dreamy hero, dissatisfied with the reality social.
• Escape into fantastical and gothic universes, far from everyday disenchantment.
• Formal freedom: breaking with rigid metrics and searching for new images.
• The open and imperfect work as a rejection of classical closure.

romantic literature

Literature was the privileged laboratory of Romanticism: subjective lyric poetry was crowned, narrative was expanded with the historical and gothic novel, and the theater became a popular loudspeaker for the yearnings for freedom, identity and emotion.

Romantic irony took hold, popular forms (romances, ballads) were revived, and serial serials exploded; the picture or article on customs and a taste for the vernacular emerged, with a determined defense of national languages ​​against the hegemony of Italian in the Opera and of the classical canons in literature.

In the theatre, romantic drama mixed verse and prose, multiplied metres (polymetry) and left behind the "three unities"; even the melologue appeared, and the stage became a space of imagination and rebellion esthetic.

Key authors and works

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): Faust, Prometheus, The Misadventures of Young Werther; bridge figure from the «Sturm und Drang».
• Friedrich Schiller, Novalis and the Brothers Grimm: Germanophone impulse to myths, ballads and romantic philosophy.
• Lord Byron: The Pilgrimages of Childe Harold, Cain; archetype of the rebel hero.
• John Keats: odes and poems that canonize the English romantic sensibility.
• Mary Shelley: Frankenstein: A Dialogue Between Science, Modernity, and the Inner Monster.
• Victor Hugo: Les Misérables, Notre Dame de Paris; poet, playwright, and monumental novelist.
• Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers; historical and adventure novels.
• Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven, The Murders in the Rue Morgue; pioneer of the horror and detective story.
• Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights; the pinnacle of late English Romanticism.
• José de Espronceda and Mariano José de Larra: a Spanish voice between satire, lyricism and criticism.
• Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: Rhymes and Legends; Post-Romantic Sensibility in Spanish.
• Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper: Romantic Imprint on the United States.
• Jorge Isaacs (María), Esteban Echeverría, Andrés Bello and José Mármol: pillars in America Latina

Romantic music

In music, Romanticism expanded the orchestra, enriched harmony, gave free rein to melody and explored the maximum of dynamic and timbral contrasts; creation was understood as a personal gesture, an expression of interiority and also as manifest public.

The lied (song with poetry), vernacular opera, and symphonic poems developed; the piano became increasingly important, with its repertoire exploiting its expressive possibilities, while new instruments such as the contrabassoon, the English horn, the tuba, and the saxophone.

Composers and outstanding pieces

• Ludwig van Beethoven: transitional figure; Symphony Nos. 5 and 9; he deleted the dedication to Napoleon from his "Eroica" for political reasons.
• Carl Maria von Weber: key to German romantic opera (The Poacher, Oberon).
• Franz Schubert: Lied and Symphony; Unfinished Symphony, Trout Quintet.
• Frédéric Chopin: Nocturnes and Polonaise, Op. 53; the soul of Romantic piano.
• Robert Schumann: Dichterliebe, Frauenliebe und Leben; fantasy and lyricism.
• Richard Wagner: Tristan and Isolde, The Ring of the Nibelung; a revolution in musical drama.
• Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms: from virtuosity and the symphonic poem to postclassical symphonism.

Plastic arts: painting and sculpture

Romantic painting freed the artist from the task, prioritized color over drawing and used light as an expressive resource; landscapes were charged with symbolism to translate the sentimental tempest of the subject, and contemporary history acquired dramatics epic.

By country and stage: in England, Thomas Girtin promoted watercolour and Turner took the landscape to the limits of light; in Germany, Caspar David Friedrich established the paradigm of the walker before the immensity; in France, Hubert Robert and Antoine-Jean Gros prepared the ground for Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, whose Liberty Leading the People became an icon; in Spain, Goya, a visionary painter, moved towards Romanticism with images as powerful as disturbing.

Other geographies also vibrated: John constable In England, Carl Spitzweg in Germany between romanticism and realism, and, outside Western Europe, Thomas Cole in the United States, Aleksander Orłowski in Poland and Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov in Russia made their presence felt with national accents.

In sculpture, although a certain classical influence remained, a greater movement was embraced, chiaroscuro and an eloquence that was sometimes grandiloquent; Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and François Rude stand out, the latter author of The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (the Marseillaise), symbol of national epic.

Romantic architecture

In architecture there was no single "romantic style", but rather an eclectic historicism that looked to the Middle Ages and other periods to differentiate itself from neoclassical sobriety; the prefixes "neo-" proliferated, with creative reinterpretations of the Gothic, Mudejar, Baroque or Byzantine.

Cathedrals were restored and unfinished medieval works were completed; the Frenchman Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was a key figure in heritage restoration. Notable examples include the neo-Gothic style of the Palace of Westminster (UK Parliament), Fonthill Abbey in England, the neo-Mudejar style of the Seville-Plaza de Armas Station, and the neo-Baroque style of the Alferaki Palace in Russia, as well as the Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein.

This formal revival coexisted with techniques and materials from the industrial era, so that the memory of the styles of the past was assembled with modern construction solutions for civil, religious and representative buildings, according to their function and context.

Historical context, ideas and sociability

Romanticism responded to the exhaustion of an 18th century dominated by the Enlightenment: faith in progress and reason was opposed by mystery, emotion, and the uniqueness of the individual; Rousseau had redefined the human being as "good by nature" and popularized the myth of the "noble savage," in contrast to the distrust Hobbesian.

Nationalism, which had already germinated in eighteenth-century thought, acquired a new ontological character: not only a political principle, but a community of destiny; when Napoleon sought to unify Europe under his empire, many artists, such as Beethoven, they reacted by moving away from the initial heroic myth.

Cultural life was articulated in gatherings and circles: in Madrid, El Parnasillo; in Paris, El Arsenal with figures such as Victor Hugo and Charles Nodier; and in Russia, the Arzamas Society; these spaces energized magazines, aesthetic controversies and the circulation of ideas that consolidated the NETWORK romantic

Language, vernacular and aesthetic renewal

Romanticism broadened poetic vocabulary, made metrics more flexible, and mixed registers; it revalued national languages ​​as emblems of identity, promoted native literature, and challenged academic uniformity, both in poetry and theater and in didactic and prose. manners.

Schlegel's notion of "progressive universal poetry" sought to dissolve boundaries between genres and integrate thought, criticism, and humor; art was to permeate life, and life, in turn, nourish art, an ambition that crystallized in open, hybrid, and border.

Representatives by discipline

Among the writers: Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Lord Byron, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Edgar Allan Poe, José de Espronceda, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Emily Brontë, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Jorge Isaacs, Esteban Echeverría, Andrés Bello and José Mármol make up a wide and plural.

In the plastic arts: Caspar David Friedrich, William Turner, Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, Leonardo Alenza, Francisco de Goya, Thomas Girtin, Hubert Robert, Antoine-Jean Gros, Carl Spitzweg, Thomas Cole, Aleksander Orłowski, Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and François Rude mark the milestones.

In music: Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, Liszt and Brahms represent the transition to full Romanticism and its projection posterior.

The romantic legacy permeates our contemporary sensibility: we still think of art as an expression of the self, we admire the sublime in nature, we seek roots in folklore and we defend our own language as a cultural brand; the legacy of this movement continues to beat in authors, works and places where emotion, imagination and freedom creative are the unwritten law of art.