Traditional Romanticism

rationalism                                                  emotion, feelings, intuition formalism                                                    spontaneity, spirituality academic authority                                     heroic self industrial revolution                                     individual experience material progress                                        love to nature  western expansion, imperialism                 common man/equality intellect                                                       creative imagination                                                                      nationalism 

Romanticism in English literature: Emotion and Feelings

This poem describes the oppressive and constraint atmosphere of London when Blake wanders through the city. By depicting the despair and fear in the faces of citizens and talking about how the money was spent on church buildings while leaving children in poverty, Blake sharply criticizes the society being corrupt and dominated by materialism during the Industrial Revolution.

 To be noticed, the sublime refers to the wildness and limitless magnificence of nature, which thus in sharp contrast to the more harmonious and pleasant experience of beauty. Kant (1968) proposed the categories of mathematical sublime and the dynamic sublime. The first is an evocation of a purely reflexive observation of infinitude by immeasurable and colossal landscapes such as high mountains and the vast night sky. Dynamic sublime is associated with the superior and destructive forces of nature in occasions of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. These events evokes both awe and fear and affect us directly in our instinct for self-preservation.

In Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings Monk by the Sea (1809), a figure faces an inky, turquoise sea, clouds rolling toward him and the sea spreading across the canvas. The identity of the figure, a monk, naturally invites the audience to think about spirituality, the key to understand people’s emotions and the meaning of nature to them. The vastness of ocean and sky delivers a sense of mathematical sublime, which makes human to realize their smallness and gives one a healing power.

Dreadful catastrophe is a recurrent theme of Romantic art. Joseph Mallord Turner is known for his expressive colors and imaginative landscapes. His marine paintings investigate nature’s turbulent moods and indomitable power. In The Shipwreck (1805), human’s uncertain existence and frailty are exemplified through the comparison with the dark and furious sea. In this way, Turner delivers a sense of dynamic sublime.

John Constable is largely responsible for reviving the importance of landscape painting in the 19th century. The Hay Wain (1821) illustrates his idyllic view of the mundane rural life and the beauty of his home country of Suffolk. Constable’s attention to countryside is a lament to the simpler time lost to the city dwellers in the era of growing industrialization.

This Romantic Primitivism describes a noble savage: “a literary stock character who embodies the concept of the indigene, outsider, wild human, an “other” who has not been “corrupted” by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness.

Henry Fuseli’s famous painting The Nightmare (1781) depicting darker, irrational forces is an icon of Romanticism and a defining image of Gothic horror. This product of imagination is a mixture of horror, sexuality, and morbidity. It inspires writers of Gothic novels such as Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe among many others.

Through Frankenstein, Mary Shelley cautioned us of the dangers of extending science into realms where we have little control of the outcomes. As Mary puts: “A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule.”