romanticism essay examples

121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples

In a romanticism essay, you can explore a variety of topics, from American literature to British paintings. For that task, these ideas of romanticism collected by our team will be helpful!

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• ⭐ Simple & Easy Romanticism Essay Titles

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• Wordsworth’s Romanticism in Tintern Abbey Poem The tone of the poem is calm and meditative and Wordsworth describes the “landscape” and compares it to the “quiet” of the sky: “The landscape with the quiet of the sky”..
• Romanticism in Frankenstein: The Use of Poetry in the Novel’s Narrative Although the dark and horrific motifs of Frankenstein may appear to contrast with the bright tones and subjects of such poetry, there is a clear connection, as established in the text, between the poetry of […]
• Between Romanticism and Modernism The first of the modernists in music sought to begin new dimensions and depths in music through the use of non-conventional instruments and novel sounds.
• Romanticism and Victorian Literature Comparison In this respect, literature can be proud of the Romanticism and Victorian literature, because of their gradual framework and applicable emergence due to the significant events, such as the French Revolution, American Revolution, the defeat […]
• Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism in Literature Romantic literature is characterized by several key traits, such as a love of nature, an emphasis on the individual and spirituality, a celebration of solitude and sadness, an interest in the common man, an idealization […]
• Romanticism in Wolfgang Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther It is the fruitless reconciliation of the impulsive and sensitive to the society that makes Young Werther’s journey so powerful. What is even more interesting is that this general tone is what led to the […]
• The French Revolution: Romanticism Period Romanticism was anchored in the work of the poets which was evident in the daily lives of the society. Besides, the role of women in romantic literature was significant, thus; they were greatest poets and […]
• Restoration Literature and Romanticism: Common Facts All in all, the period of Restoration in the English literature can be described as the vindication of mind, intellectual values and political interests. The diction of this period is soft, inspiring, light and moving.
• Ethnocentrism, Romanticism, Exoticism, and Primitivism as Depicted in James Cameron’s “Avatar” Ethnocentrism is depicted in most scenes of Avatar; the film outlines Na’vi’s ways of life and the way the protagonist is forced to profess the culture before being admitted into the community.
• Nature in 18th Century and Romanticism Literatures The anxiety inherent in a sketch – the feeling of being unsettled – leads Goldsmith to other stylistic choices, most notably the creation of illusions and the reliance upon sentiment, both of which smooth away […]
• Romanticism Period in Art 3 It is against this scope that this paper aims to explore the aspect of romanticism in the history of painting by considering the works of artists such as Kauffmann, David, Delacroix and Gros.
• Romanticism as an Ideological and Artistic Trend Romanticism in painting rejected the rationalism of classicism and reflected the attention to the depths of the human personality characteristic of the philosophy of the Romantics.
• Features of French Romanticism in Camille Saint-Saens’s Music It is important to analyze Camille Saint-Saens’s works in the context of French Romanticism because the composer often combined the elements of French Romanticism with features typical of other movements and music styles like habanera.
• Gothic Romanticism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Nathaniel Hawthorn’s “The Birthmark” In the film “The Black Swan” directed by Darren Aronofsky, Nina struggles to fit into the ultimate role of the play “The Swan Lake”, as the Black Swan, even though she is comfortable playing the […]
• Romanticism in Seascape Painting by Jules Dupre In particular, it is important to examine the stylistic peculiarities of this artwork and the way in which it reflects the cultural trends that emerged in the nineteenth century.
• Nature as the Mean of Expression in Romanticism The period of Romanticism is characterized by its address to nature, in other words, the world was perceived through the nature.”It is characterized by a shift from the structured, intellectual, reasoned approach of the 1700’s […]
• Romanticism of Blake’s and Ghalib’s Poems In this journal, I will look at how Blake and Ghalib exemplify the Romantic movement, how their works differ from those of the Enlightenment, and the significance of their democratic and accessible writing style.
• Romanticism: Beethoven’s Pathétique and Douglass’ The Narrative Two such examples of Romanticism works are Beethoven’s piano sonata, Pathetique, and Frederick Douglass’s The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
• Researching of Musical Romanticism The critical characteristics of musical Romanticism could be seen in the stress on uniqueness and individuality, the expression of one’s emotions, and freedom of form and experimentation.
• Renaissance and Romanticism: Concepts of Beauty Titian, as a representative of the Renaissance, depicted a portrait of a girl in compliance with all the canons of his time.
• Romanticism in Modern Ecological Literature The current efforts by humans to safeguard the environment, coupled with the onset of ecological literature, not only indicates that romanticism never disappeared but also proves that the romantics were right. The artists were critical […]
• Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, and Rococo Thus, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the neoclassical style was widely popular in Europe. This style contradicted the coldness and simplicity of neoclassicism.
• Romanticism. Artists Associated With the Movement Art dealt mostly with issues of motive and realism while other forms of art dealt with the darkness of the community on one hand and its magnificence on the other.
• Gothic Romanticism of Edgar Allen Poe When the thought of today, the nineteenth-century writer Edgar Allan Poe is remembered as the master of the short story and the psychological thriller.

⭐ Simple & Easy Romanticism Essay Titles

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poetry: British Romanticism There can be no doubt as to the fact that Romantic writers and poets strongly opposed the ideals of the French Revolution; however, this was not due to these ideals’ rational essence, but because, during […]
• Revolution and Romanticism in Europe and America The analysis of romanticism presentation on the basis of Rousseau’s theory is to be reflected through the atmosphere of French revolution period. Romanticism of Rousseau appeared to be close to the approach of ‘primitivism’, characterizing […]
• Romanticism: Paintings by Francisco Goya The first painting depicted a nude woman in the Western art and the second painting was painted after controversial thoughts from the Spanish society over the meaning of The Nude Maja.
• Tristan and Isolde Opera Romanticism The Tristan and Isolde drama is influenced by a wide range of things. Wagner uses the voices to show what is in the thoughts of Isolde and her attendant.
• British Romanticism and Its Origins It was partially a rebellion against aristocratic social and political standards of the Age of Enlightenment and a response against the scientific explanation of nature and was exemplified most powerfully in the visual arts, music, […]
• Romanticizing Literature, Visual Arts and Music During Romanticism 1800-1850 As “it emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental”, the Romanticism period inspired many artists in the field of literature, painting, music, […]
• Enlightenment and Romanticism: Comparison In the wake up of the feminist and historicist takes to pieces of the older Romanticism, particularly Bloom’s “creative thinker corporation” and the Wordsworth-centered verse of consciousness and the natural world, one has to inquire […]
• American Romanticism of “The Minister’s Black Veil” In the story Hawthorne pondered upon the three ways of making God’s word clearer to people. The author himself and his main hero saw the mission of a clergyman in explaining the Bible to the […]
• Chopin: Musician Who Had Effect Romanticism Music At the beginning of the musical period known as Romanticism Frederic Chopin was born in Poland. The piano was his chosen instrument and one that he mastered at a very young age.
• The Age of Romanticism and Its Factors Characteristics of the genre identified by Welleck include a “revolt against the principles of neo-classicism criticism, the rediscovery of older English literature, the turn toward subjectivity and the worship of external nature slowly prepared during […]
• Neoclassicism and Romanticism: Comparison They were the two poles of architectural thinking on the side of Neoclassicism was a rational, objective, almost scientific method of thought, which put reason in the first place among human abilities.
• Romanticism. Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” One of the most typical traits of romantic literature is the prevalence of emotions, setting the natural world above the created world, and the most important, freedom of an individual.
• Gustave Courbet: Revolutionary Artist of Romanticism While the clergy is visible from the background of the work, the decision by the painter to focus on the dog in the foreground was even more appalling.
• Baroque and Romanticism Art Periods and Influences The above two works of art depict great disparities in art as a result of communal, political, and economic factors of mankind during the periods.
• American Industrialization, Romanticism and Civil War In the article, the Romantic Movement Romantic impulse meant the liberation of the Americans to a point of freedom regarding respect and love.
• The Age of Romanticism: Dances Articles Analysis On the one hand, it seems that these two writings have nothing in common except the intentions of the authors to make contributions to the field of dance and choose the theme of ballet for […]
• Edgar Allan Poe, an American Romanticism Writer Poe’s three works “The fall of the house of Usher”, “the Raven” and “The Masque of the Red Death” describe his dedication to literature and his negative attitudes towards aristocracy.
• Nineteenth Century Romanticism The works of early composers, writers, painters, and poets evolved from the onset, and in the increased quest for perfection, a spirit of romanticism was born.
• Romanticism, Baroque and Renaissance Paintings’ Analysis It is possible to focus on such artworks as the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar Friedrich, The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio, and Raphael’s The School of Athens.
• Romanticism and the Modern Theatre The statement by the Romantic writer confirms the need to involve ordinary people in the theatre. The relationship between Faust and the devil in Goethe’s play is different from that in the traditional myth.
• Art influences Culture: Romanticism & Realism In addition, the paper also highlights issues of the time and influences of the later works on the art world. Realism presented events of the society as they happened in reality.
• Feminism Builds up in Romanticism, Realism, Modernism Exploring the significance of the theme as well as the motifs of this piece, it becomes essential to understand that the era of modernism injected individualism in the literary works.
• The History of the Romanticism Period Romanticism refers to the period of intellectual, artistic and literary movement in Europe in the first half of nineteenth century. The supporters of the Romantic Movement point to the spontaneous and irrational display of powerful […]
• Light vs. Dark Romanticism As the narration continues and Katrina is wooed by Crane, Irving interrupts and expresses his imagination about the challenging and admirable nature of women.
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Romanticism
• The Three Different Features of Romanticism in The World is Too Much With Us, a Poem by William Wordsworth
• Romanticism And Realism: Examples Of Mark Twain And Herman Melville Novels
• William Cullen Bryant and American Romanticism
• The American Renaissance: Transcendentalism, Romanticism and Dark Romanticism
• The Influence Of The French Revolution Upon British Romanticism
• The Relationship Between Romanticism And Transcendentalism
• Transcendentalism: Principal Expression of Romanticism in America
• Socialism And Ideas Associated With The Movement In Relation To Those Of Romanticism
• Women’s Self-Discovery During Late American Romanticism
• The French Romanticism Of Moliere And Shakespeare ‘s Midsummer Night ‘s
• The Role of Romanticism and Realism in the Development of Art
• The Historical Development of Literature from the Enlightenment through Romanticism to Modernism
• The Characteristics of the Romanticism in Wordsworth
• The Influence of Romanticism on People as Demonstrated in the Story of Madam Bovary
• Realism and Romanticism: Similarities and Differences
• The Romanticism Movement in the Novel The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff
• Varieties Of Romanticism In The Poetry Of Blake Shelly And Keats
• Walt Whitman And The Romanticism Movement
• Sexism, Romanticism, and the Portrayal of Women in Eighteenth Century Art
• The Shift from Romanticism to Realism in Mark Twain’s Satire Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences
• The Washington Irving’s Romanticism
• The Categorization of Romanticism and Realism at the End of the Baroque Period in the 18th Century
• The Theme of Nature in Frankenstein as a Representation of the Effect Romanticism Had on Mary Shelley
• The Key Tensions in Romanticism in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan and Keat’s Ode to a Nightingale
• Tom Sawyer as a Representation of Walter Scott’s Romanticism and Tradition in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a Novel by Mark Twain
• The Use of Romanticism in The Raven, a Poem by Edgar Allan Poe
• William Wordsworth’s Daffodils and Negative Romanticism
• The Use of Romanticism by Different Literary Authors
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – An Obvious Depiction of Romanticism and Realism
• What Is The Romanticism Of Johnathan Keats And Wordsworth
• The Romanticism Of The 19th Century
• The Tables Turned’ by William Wordsworth and Romanticism
• Use Of Romanticism In Development Of Characters In The Scarlet Letter
• The Similarities Between Romanticism And Modernism
• The Effect of Romanticism, Nationalism, and Communism in Shaping the European Nations
• The Progression of Knowledge Between the 18th-Century Neoclassicism and 19th-Century Romanticism
• The Origins, Spirit, Style, Themes, and Decline of the Romanticism Movement in Literature
• The Elements of Romanticism in the Short Story, The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Symbols of Romanticism in the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Characteristics Of Romanticism Found In The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
• The Romanticism and Realism in Art and Literature
• The Themes of Guilt, Suffering, and Experience in Literature During the Romanticism and Victorian Era
• What Is the Difference Between Romanticism and Postmodernism?
• How Does William Wordsworth’s Poetry Fit Into the Literary Tradition of Romanticism?
• What Are the Differences Between Romanticism and Classicism?
• How Did Romanticism and Photography Shape Western Modernity?
• What Is the Opposite of Romanticism?
• Is Nature a Dominant Theme in Romantic Poetry?
• What Were the Material Causes of the Rise of Romanticism?
• How Did Romanticism Change Society’s Way of Thinking?
• What Are the Similarities Between Romantic Literature and Early Victorian Literature?
• How Has Romanticism Diminished Throughout Popularity?
• What Are the Main Features of Romantic Poetry?
• How Did Romanticism Influence American Architecture?
• What Are the Four Basic Tenets of Romanticism?
• How Did Romanticism Kill Love?
• What Did the Romantics Revolt Against, and What Did They Revive?
• How Do Romantics Emphasize Individuality?
• What Were the Characteristic Features of Poetry During the Romantic Movement?
• Why Did Romantic Writers Reject Rationalism?
• What Are Some Characteristics of Romantic Poetry?
• Why Is Imagination Closely Linked With Romanticism?
• What Is the Contribution of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley to the Romanticism?
• Why Is the Prometheus Myth Important for Romanticism?
• What Is Romantic Language and Style?
• Who Were the Most Famous Writers During the American Romantic Era?
• What Are Some Short Notes on Romanticism?
• Why Should a Student Study Romantic Poetry?
• What Is the Importance of 3 Major Concepts of Romanticism?
• How Does Romantic Writing Differ From the Early American Writings Done by the Puritans?
• What Are the Salient Features of Romanticism?
• What Inspired Poets of Romantic Era to Write Poems?
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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

• Romanticism

Théodore Gericault

Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct

Alfred Dedreux (1810–1860) as a Child

The Start of the Race of the Riderless Horses

Horace Vernet

Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Gericault (1791–1824)

Inundated Ruins of a Monastery

Karl Blechen

Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds

John Constable

Eugène Delacroix

Royal Tiger

Stormy Coast Scene after a Shipwreck

French Painter

Mother and Child by the Sea

Johan Christian Dahl

The Natchez

Wanderer in the Storm

Julius von Leypold

The Abduction of Rebecca

Jewish Woman of Algiers Seated on the Ground

Théodore Chassériau

The Virgin Adoring the Host

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Ovid among the Scythians

Kathryn Calley Galitz Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. Though often posited in opposition to Neoclassicism , early Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques Louis David’s studio, including Baron Antoine Jean Gros, Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson, and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. This blurring of stylistic boundaries is best expressed in Ingres’ Apotheosis of Homer and Eugène Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus (both Museé du Louvre, Paris), which polarized the public at the Salon of 1827 in Paris. While Ingres’ work seemingly embodied the ordered classicism of David in contrast to the disorder and tumult of Delacroix, in fact both works draw from the Davidian tradition but each ultimately subverts that model, asserting the originality of the artist—a central notion of Romanticism.

In Romantic art, nature—with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes—offered an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. The violent and terrifying images of nature conjured by Romantic artists recall the eighteenth-century aesthetic of the Sublime. As articulated by the British statesman Edmund Burke in a 1757 treatise and echoed by the French philosopher Denis Diderot a decade later, “all that stuns the soul, all that imprints a feeling of terror, leads to the sublime.” In French and British painting of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the recurrence of images of shipwrecks ( 2003.42.56 ) and other representations of man’s struggle against the awesome power of nature manifest this sensibility. Scenes of shipwrecks culminated in 1819 with Théodore Gericault’s strikingly original Raft of the Medusa (Louvre), based on a contemporary event. In its horrifying explicitness, emotional intensity, and conspicuous lack of a hero, The Raft of the Medusa became an icon of the emerging Romantic style. Similarly, J. M. W. Turner’s 1812 depiction of Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps (Tate, London), in which the general and his troops are dwarfed by the overwhelming scale of the landscape and engulfed in the swirling vortex of snow, embodies the Romantic sensibility in landscape painting. Gericault also explored the Romantic landscape in a series of views representing different times of day; in Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct ( 1989.183 ), the dramatic sky, blasted tree, and classical ruins evoke a sense of melancholic reverie.

Another facet of the Romantic attitude toward nature emerges in the landscapes of John Constable , whose art expresses his response to his native English countryside. For his major paintings, Constable executed full-scale sketches, as in a view of Salisbury Cathedral ( 50.145.8 ); he wrote that a sketch represents “nothing but one state of mind—that which you were in at the time.” When his landscapes were exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1824, critics and artists embraced his art as “nature itself.” Constable’s subjective, highly personal view of nature accords with the individuality that is a central tenet of Romanticism.

This interest in the individual and subjective—at odds with eighteenth-century rationalism—is mirrored in the Romantic approach to portraiture. Traditionally, records of individual likeness, portraits became vehicles for expressing a range of psychological and emotional states in the hands of Romantic painters. Gericault probed the extremes of mental illness in his portraits of psychiatric patients, as well as the darker side of childhood in his unconventional portrayals of children. In his portrait of Alfred Dedreux ( 41.17 ), a young boy of about five or six, the child appears intensely serious, more adult than childlike, while the dark clouds in the background convey an unsettling, ominous quality.

Such explorations of emotional states extended into the animal kingdom, marking the Romantic fascination with animals as both forces of nature and metaphors for human behavior. This curiosity is manifest in the sketches of wild animals done in the menageries of Paris and London in the 1820s by artists such as Delacroix, Antoine-Louis Barye, and Edwin Landseer. Gericault depicted horses of all breeds—from workhorses to racehorses—in his work. Lord Byron’s 1819 tale of Mazeppa tied to a wild horse captivated Romantic artists from Delacroix to Théodore Chassériau, who exploited the violence and passion inherent in the story. Similarly, Horace Vernet, who exhibited two scenes from Mazeppa in the Salon of 1827 (both Musée Calvet, Avignon), also painted the riderless horse race that marked the end of the Roman Carnival, which he witnessed during his 1820 visit to Rome. His oil sketch ( 87.15.47 ) captures the frenetic energy of the spectacle, just before the start of the race. Images of wild, unbridled animals evoked primal states that stirred the Romantic imagination.

Along with plumbing emotional and behavioral extremes, Romantic artists expanded the repertoire of subject matter, rejecting the didacticism of Neoclassical history painting in favor of imaginary and exotic subjects. Orientalism and the worlds of literature stimulated new dialogues with the past as well as the present. Ingres’ sinuous odalisques ( 38.65 ) reflect the contemporary fascination with the exoticism of the harem, albeit a purely imagined Orient, as he never traveled beyond Italy. In 1832, Delacroix journeyed to Morocco, and his trip to North Africa prompted other artists to follow. In 1846, Chassériau documented his visit to Algeria in notebooks filled with watercolors and drawings, which later served as models for paintings done in his Paris studio ( 64.188 ). Literature offered an alternative form of escapism. The novels of Sir Walter Scott, the poetry of Lord Byron, and the drama of Shakespeare transported art to other worlds and eras. Medieval England is the setting of Delacroix’s tumultuous Abduction of Rebecca ( 03.30 ), which illustrates an episode from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe .

In its stylistic diversity and range of subjects, Romanticism defies simple categorization. As the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1846, “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling.”

Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “Romanticism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Brookner, Anita. Romanticism and Its Discontents . New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux; : , 2000.

Honour, Hugh. Romanticism . New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Additional Essays by Kathryn Calley Galitz

• Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ The Legacy of Jacques Louis David (1748–1825) .” (October 2004)
• Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) .” (May 2009)
• Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ The French Academy in Rome .” (October 2003)

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Romanticism in Literature: Definition and Examples

Finding beauty in nature and the common man.

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• B.A., English, Rutgers University

Romanticism was a literary movement that began in the late 18th century, ending around the middle of the 19th century—although its influence continues to this day. Marked by a focus on the individual (and the unique perspective of a person, often guided by irrational, emotional impulses), a respect for nature and the primitive, and a celebration of the common man, Romanticism can be seen as a reaction to the huge changes in society that occurred during this period, including the revolutions that burned through countries like France and the United States, ushering in grand experiments in democracy.

Key Takeaways: Romanticism in Literature

• Romanticism is a literary movement spanning roughly 1790–1850.
• The movement was characterized by a celebration of nature and the common man, a focus on individual experience, an idealization of women, and an embrace of isolation and melancholy.
• Prominent Romantic writers include John Keats, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley.

Romanticism Definition

The term Romanticism does not stem directly from the concept of love, but rather from the French word romaunt (a romantic story told in verse). Romanticism focused on emotions and the inner life of the writer, and often used autobiographical material to inform the work or even provide a template for it, unlike traditional literature at the time.

Romanticism celebrated the primitive and elevated "regular people" as being deserving of celebration, which was an innovation at the time. Romanticism also fixated on nature as a primordial force and encouraged the concept of isolation as necessary for spiritual and artistic development.

Characteristics of Romanticism

Romantic literature is marked by six primary characteristics: celebration of nature, focus on the individual and spirituality, celebration of isolation and melancholy, interest in the common man, idealization of women, and personification and pathetic fallacy.

Celebration of Nature

Romantic writers saw nature as a teacher and a source of infinite beauty. One of the most famous works of Romanticism is John Keats’ To Autumn (1820):

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,– While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

Keats personifies the season and follows its progression from the initial arrival after summer, through the harvest season, and finally to autumn’s end as winter takes its place.

Focus on the Individual and Spirituality

Romantic writers turned inward, valuing the individual experience above all else. This in turn led to heightened sense of spirituality in Romantic work, and the addition of occult and supernatural elements.

The work of Edgar Allan Poe exemplifies this aspect of the movement; for example, The Raven tells the story of a man grieving for his dead love (an idealized woman in the Romantic tradition) when a seemingly sentient Raven arrives and torments him, which can be interpreted literally or seen as a manifestation of his mental instability.

Celebration of Isolation and Melancholy

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a very influential writer in Romanticism; his books of essays explored many of the themes of the literary movement and codified them. His 1841 essay Self-Reliance is a seminal work of Romantic writing in which he exhorts the value of looking inward and determining your own path, and relying on only your own resources.

Related to the insistence on isolation, melancholy is a key feature of many works of Romanticism, usually seen as a reaction to inevitable failure—writers wished to express the pure beauty they perceived and failure to do so adequately resulted in despair like the sort expressed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in A Lament :

O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb. Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more—Oh, never more!

Interest in the Common Man

William Wordsworth was one of the first poets to embrace the concept of writing that could be read, enjoyed, and understood by anyone. He eschewed overly stylized language and references to classical works in favor of emotional imagery conveyed in simple, elegant language, as in his most famous poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud :

I wandered lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o'er vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden Daffodils; Beside the Lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Idealization of Women

In works such as Poe’s The Raven , women were always presented as idealized love interests, pure and beautiful, but usually without anything else to offer. Ironically, the most notable novels of the period were written by women (Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Mary Shelley, for example), but had to be initially published under male pseudonyms because of these attitudes. Much Romantic literature is infused with the concept of women being perfect innocent beings to be adored, mourned, and respected—but never touched or relied upon.

Personification and Pathetic Fallacy

Romantic literature’s fixation on nature is characterized by the heavy use of both personification and pathetic fallacy. Mary Shelley used these techniques to great effect in Frankenstein :

Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.

Romanticism continues to influence literature today; Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight novels are clear descendants of the movement, incorporating most of the characteristics of classic Romanticism despite being published a century and half after the end of the movement’s active life.

• The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Romanticism.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 19 Nov. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/art/Romanticism.
• Parker, James. “A Book That Examines the Writing Processes of Two Poetry Giants.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 23 July 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/07/how-two-literary-giants-wrote-their-best-poetry/594514/.
• Alhathani, Safa. “EN571: Literature & Technology.” EN571 Literature Technology, 13 May 2018, https://commons.marymount.edu/571sp17/2018/05/13/analysis-of-romanticism-in-frankenstein-through-digital-tools/.
• “William Wordsworth.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-wordsworth.
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Romanticism

Romanticism definition.

Romanticism is one of the recurring themes that are linked to either imagination, idealism, inspiration, intuition, or individualism. The theme often criticizes the past, stresses upon sensibility, isolation of the writer and pays homage to nature. Preceded by Enlightenment, Romanticism brought not only fresh poetry but also great novels in English Literature. Started from England and spread throughout Europe including the United States, the Romantic movement includes famous writers such as William Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Lord Byron , Shelley, Chatterton, and Hawthorne.

Etymologically, romantic has been modified from the French word romaunt that means a tale of chivalry. After two German writers Schlegel brothers used this word for poetry, it transformed into a movement like an epidemic and spread throughout Europe.

Examples of Romanticism in Literature

To Autumn by John Keats

“ Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage- trees , And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”

This is one of the best romantic poems of its time. Keats composed this phenomenal romantic poem during one of his evenings in Winchester. It describes the autumn and its features through imagination, intuition, and idealism. Keats describes three stages of autumn as it progresses from early autumn to mid-autumn and the onset of winter and compares it to the cycle of life in general.

To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley

“We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.”

The above lines show a strong inclination to the expression of subjectivity or individuality of the poet in his poetry. Although Shelley is writing about the skylark, he expressed his personal feelings of sorrow in the poem and related them to the song of the bird. This romantic trait runs throughout the poem.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein is one of the best examples of romantic novels. It shows the idea of how supernatural works in an environment where the pursuit of knowledge and discovery of Victor Frankenstein overpowers him so much so that he forgets the moral aspects of life and creation. He rather becomes a godlike human being and creates a monster instead of a human. Moreover, the novel has also stressed upon feelings of love and romance . The monster’s intense desire to have a mate points to the theme of romanticism.

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

“ I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.”

In this poem, Wordsworth has elaborated his personal feelings as he sees daffodils and everything else around him. He continues to describe the beauty of nature not only in the flowers but also trees, stars, and the milky way galaxy.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  “It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. ‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din.’ He holds him with his skinny hand, ‘There was a ship,’ quoth he. ‘Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!’ Eftsoons his hand dropt he.”

These three stanzas tell a mysterious tale which contains elements of surprise and dream-like situation. The entire poem has these romantic elements in the story of the ancient marine which has transformed it into a representative poem of the romantic movement.

Romanticism Meaning and Function

  Romanticism, as a movement in literature, has also led the writers and poets to create masterpieces having romantic elements. Romanticism as theme celebrates freedom and breaking conventional rules. Romanticism is also considered an active power with functions to present our imagination.

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Essay: Romanticism

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Prevailing over English literature for mainly 34 years (1798-1832), Romanticism proved itself as one of the most ingenious, extreme and instable of all ages, a time characterized by insurrection, conservatism and reformation in politics, and by the creation of imaginative literature in its characteristically contemporary structure. It came to be a period when principles and ideals were in union, when radicalism and conventions, the old and the new were as essential as the more customarily literary ideas of human and nature, innocence and experience, youth and age. This supreme trend in English literature was Renaissance, which changed not only English, but the European life as well; by extremely impelling force on Life and Art. Encompassing the mysterious and fearless of the oppositions of human life, Romanticism destructed the artistic, philosophical, even geographical boundaries of the preceding ages. It altered the way people perceived the world, stressing the virtue of the individual and rejecting to defer to traditions. Romantic compositions echoed the preferences and mores of the period and considered more than ever the individual human experience as well as personal cogitations. Romanticism influenced not only the arts and humanities, but the society as a whole, permanently shifting the manner in which human sentiments, relations, and institutions were contemplated, understood, and artistically or otherwise reproduced. However, Romanticism was not a unified movement with a distinctly established outline, and its importance differed widely depending on time, place and individual author. Inspired by Rousseau’s idealism, Romanticism put an emphasis on the significance of the individual, resisted the rationalism and it opposed the addiction of literature to traditional ancient standards and supported a return to nature. The classical writers were investigated in a new and different way, and were developed by the genius of Shelley and Keats; the Middle Ages incited the historical novels of Scott and the works of Coleridge, Southey, and many others; modern life were studied and critisized in the compositions of the fiction writers and the satirical writings of Byron. Through distinguishing traits of their writings, the Romantic writers transformed the whole spirit of poetry in early nineteenth century. They established in literature an icon of wandering exiles among which were pedlars and vagrants of Wordsworth’s poems, Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’, Mary Shelley’s man-made monster, and the numerous tortured outcasts in the writings of P. B. Shelley and Byron. Romanticism brought to literature the idea of the poetry being essentially ‘imitation’ of human nature and its primary function remaining the manifestation of the poet’s emotion. Romantic poetry was, however, a kind of verse distinct from anything before it both in form and subject matter. Its language was influenced by new thoughts of democratisation and simplicity in which artificial poetic diction was substituted by a form of language really spoken by common people. The prose of the Romantic period also renounced their precursors by concentrating on the critical study of literature, its practice and theory as we find in Wordsworth’s Preface to ‘Lyrical Ballads’, Coleridge’s ‘Biographia Literaria’and Shelley’s ‘Defence of Poetry’. Romantic literature generated a different ‘creative spirit’ that displays itself in the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron and in the prose of De Quincey, Lamb, Scott, and Jane Austen – a brilliant generation of writers, whose nationalistic enthusiasm advocates the Elizabethan days, and whose intellectual and artistic power contributed to the recognition of Romanticism as the ‘second creative age’ of English literature. As a whole, Romanticism epitomizes a second revival of literature in England, particularly in lyric and narrative poetry which superseds the Augustan improvement of didactic and satiric forms. This indeed was the epoch that saw the advent of those concepts of literature and of literary history, on which contemporary English scholarship has been established. It is clearly seen that though Romanticism came to an end at the beginning of the XIX century, its impact is still sensed in modern art and literature. Many notions developed in Romantic epoch, like creative imagination, nature, myth and symbolism, emotions and intuition, autonomy from regulations, spontaneity, plain language, individual experiences, democracy and freedom, as well as an attraction with the past, counting ancient myths and the mysticism of the Medieval age still continues to be the gist of literary writings. Key character types such as the Byronic hero and the disastrous woman (the femme fatale), futuristic and bizarre settings of science fiction ( Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ ), the millennial poems of political revolution and disenchantment, and the first strong literary involvements with the women’s rights (Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’) widely met in today’s literature, all are the creations of Romantic age. Furthermore, Romanticism represented many of disagreements and ideological disputes that are at the core of the contemporary world; political liberty and oppression, individual and collective duties or liabilities, masculine and feminine roles (until lately the established standard of Romanticism was almost entirely male), past, present, and future. It has proven the foundation of the contemporary western worldview, which saw people as free individuals endeavouring fulfillment through democratic actions, rather than as restrained members of a conventional, authoritarian society. However, the most precious donation of Romanticism is the growth of the genius of two young poets, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose experiments with poetry and poetic diction conduced to the formation of modern-day literature. Shelley is a supreme and creative lyrical writer in the English literature whose lyrical force is now asserted to be one of the major contributions to literature as have been the dramatic flair of Shakespeare. In some respects, Shelley is the quintessential Romantic poet, his eccentric and brief life with its outlandish unearthliness, his moods of delight and dreaminess, his elevated mythopoetic imagination, his ecstatic idealism, merging to form a widespread image of Romanticism. Shelley was also a deep philosopher whose writings ask and reply many elemental inquiries in life. He was the first writer in English literature to portray the ordinary people as the only force capable of shifting the existing order of life. Shelley led the melody of verse to a degree of perfection unknown in English poetry before him. His rich imagination, his power of rhythmical expression, his harmonious lyricism and his passion for liberty made his poetry unequalled and brought him in a line with most momentous writers of the early nineteenth century. The complexity of his philosophical idealism, the spiritual and aesthetic quality of his poetry established Shelley as ‘the master-singer of modern race and age’, whereas his principles of gender equality and free love had attracted commentary on the poet as a first advocate of feminism . Shelley had fervour for improving the world and this enthusiasm shines again and again in his writings, in glows that are now intensely comprehensible and exceptionally pure. His conviction in change, the equality of the genders, the strength of imagination and love are repeatedly communicated in his poems, and they provoked much disputes among his conformist confreres. From the artistic point of view, the most visible characteristic of his verse is the rapturous yearning for Beauty and its glorious manifestation. No poetry is filled in the same manner as Shelley’s with images magnificent and elegant in form. More than any other Romantic poet, Shelley brought a stirred moral sanguinity to his compositions which he expected would influence his readers sensuously, morally and spiritually. Shelley’s principal poems, including ‘The Revolt of Islam’, ‘Prometheus Unbound’, ‘Adonais’, and ‘The Triumph of Life’ are the greatest representation of radical idea produced in the Romantic period, whereas his shorter lyrics and odes are among the finest in the English literature. Similar to Shelley, Keats was for the late nineteenth century the ‘poet’s poet’ overpowering the grapes of language with his aesthetic taste and indulging in a mysterious world of dream, grief and sensation. His poetry is crowded with love, beauty, imagination and sinuosity that are the heart of romanticism. Keats was a zealous philosopher, as disclosed by his letters; in these he meditated on the essence of poetry and the poet and fought with the problems of anguish and demise. Keats’s letters demonstrated the commencement of a mature and penetrating mind that might, given time, have modified his lavish Romanticism to something like a Shakespearian trait, while his poems were representations of the completely sensuous facet of the Romantic movement. Keats had an astounding talent of perceiving the true spirit of the classics-an ability alien to numerous great intellectuals, and to the majority of the “classic” poets of the preceding age, – and enabled him to reflect in contemporary English literature the mood of the ancient Greeks. He was the last eminent English writer to whom Greek mythology was an abiding and living source not only of delight but of elevated understanding of the natural world as well. Whilst Shelley was supporting unachievable reforms, and Byron enunciating his own egotism and the political dissatisfaction of his age, Keats dwelled apart from human race and from all political values, venerating beauty like a zealot, completely content to compose the things that were in his own heart, or to mirror the grandeur of the natural world as he noticed or desired it to be. Like other great poets of his generation, Keats made the investigation of poetic imagination and creativity the prime pursuit of his verse. Through the imaginary characters of goddesses Psyche and Melancholy, the natural symbol of the nightingale, and the man-made urn, Keats contemplated and verified his queries concerning the conditions that enables creativeness, the various forms the creativeness can take, the connection between nature and art, and the link between eternal art and its mortal creator. Keats was the great expert of the Romantic ode. The luxuriant sensorial language of his odes, their idealistic interest in truth and beauty, and their strong suffering when faced with death are Romantic concerns-though along with that, they are all exclusively Keats’s. Keats’s literary activity lasted nearly four years and comprises merely fifty-four poems. However, all through his career Keats displayed notable intellectual and artistic development. From the observation of his compositions, it is clearly seen that if he had lived, and if with broader understanding of men and more profound experiences of life he had reached to Wordsworth’s spiritual insight and Byron’s power of fervour and knowledge, he would have grown into a greater poet than either. He would have produced more and superior narrative poetry, wherein human personages depicted with psychological discernment would have moved before a background of romantic beauty. For Keats had a style- a ‘natural magic’- that makes his compositions higher than anything in contemporary English poetry and drive us back to Milton or Shakespeare for a comparison. Taking into consideration all the above mentioned, we can assert that both Keats and Shelley were true Romantics with their ardent admiration for the natural world, idealism, emotional and physical passion, and fascination with mystical and supernatural. Their poetry is soaked with intense philosophy on life, nature and human identity which were the topmost concerns of the Romantic age. Shelley and Keats established Romantic verse as the principal poetic institution of the age. They breathed a second life to the classical poetic forms and adapted them to illustrate the fundamental problems of their time. Being the last masters of the sonnet, they both made it a dazzling medium of personal expressions. Percy Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ and John Keats’s ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ proves to be the elevated samples of the Romantic sonnet. Shelley’s and Keats’s poetry divulged the seasonal process in nature by creating the ambiance of aging and transience. John Keats’s ‘To Autumn’ and Percy Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ both express a deep philosophical message regarding either the wastefulness of man’s life or the fertility of nature, whereas poets’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘To a Skylark’ contrasts that spirit of transience with the timelessness of art. Though, Shelley and Keats were the most contentious literary men of the first decades of nineteenth century, their importance to English language and literature is broadly recognized in our days. Having much similar in imagination, thoughts, productions and fate, they laid the foundations for the contemporary literature, both verse and prose.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Gothic Fiction — Gothic Aesthetic in the Romantic Period

Gothic Aesthetic in The Romantic Period

• Categories: Gothic Fiction Romantic Era

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Published: Jun 29, 2018

Words: 4681 | Pages: 10.5 | 24 min read

Works Ci t ed

• Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Service & Paton, 1897. Print.
• Clery, E.J. “The genesis of ‘Gothic’ fiction.” Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 21-39. Print.
• Colerdige, Samuel Taylor. “Christabel.” The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse. Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. 376-393. Print.
• Duggett, Tom. Gothic Romanticism: Architecture, Politics, and Literary Form. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print.
• Gamer, Michael. Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre Reception, and Canon Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Print.
• “Gothic Fiction.” The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2007. eBook.
• Hume, Robert D. “Gothic Versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel.” PMLA 84.2 (1969): 282-290. JSTOR. Web. 21 Dec 2011.
• Keats, John. “The Eve of St Agnes.” The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse. Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. 376-393. Print.
• Longueil, Alfred E. “The Word ‘Gothic’ in Eighteenth Century Criticism.” Modern Language Notes 38.8 (1923): 453-460. JSTOR. Web. 3 Jan 2012.
• “Romanticism.” The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2007. eBook.
• Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. London: Penguin Books, 2001. Print.

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