Romanticism (art and literature)

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In literature and the visual arts, a style that emphasizes the imagination, emotions, and creativity of the individual artist. Romanticism also refers specifically to late-18th- and early-19th-century European culture, as contrasted with 18th-century classicism. See also English literature.

Inspired by the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau and by contemporary social change and revolution (American and French), Romanticism emerged as a reaction to 18th-century values, asserting emotion and intuition over rationalism, the importance of the individual over social conformity, and the exploration of natural and psychic wildernesses over classical restraint. Major themes of Romantic art and literature include a love of atmospheric landscapes; nostalgia for the past, particularly the Gothic; a love of the primitive, including folk traditions; cult of the individual hero figure, often an artist or political revolutionary; romantic passion; mysticism; and a fascination with death.

In literature, Romanticism is represented by Novalis, Clemens Brentano, Joseph Eichendorff, and Johann Tieck in Germany, who built on the work of the Sturm und Drang movement; William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and Walter Scott in Britain; and Victor Hugo, Alfonse de Lamartine, George Sand, and Alexandre Dumas père in France. The work of the US writers Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Walt Whitman reflects the influence of Romanticism.

In art, Caspar David Friedrich in Germany and J M W Turner in England are outstanding landscape painters of the Romantic tradition, while Henry Fuseli and William Blake represent a mystical and fantastic trend. The French painter Eugène Delacroix is often cited as the embodiment of the true Romantic artist.

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