ABSTRACT
The Romantic period in European culture runs from approximately 1780 to 1850. While Romantic works of art are generally readily identifiable as such (for example in the painting of Turner and Delacroix, the poetry of Wordsworth and Byron, and the music of Wagner), the precise formulation of what Romantic artists and thinkers have in common is elusive. Romanticism is perhaps best seen as a cluster of attitudes and themes, rather than as a single coherent doctrine. At its core is a reaction to Enlightenment emphasis on reason and order, and thus as a reaction to classicism in the arts. Originally ‘Romantic’ referred merely to the romance languages,
and hence to writing in the vernacular French, rather than Latin. In 1755, Dr Johnson defined ‘Romantick’ as ‘resembling the tales or romances; wild . . . improbable; false . . .; fanciful; full of wild scenery’. This definition already begins to capture something of the cluster of Romantic concerns. The Romantic breaks free of classicism through a renewed appeal to emotion, and crucially to the darker emotions of fear and suffering. Thus, while the Enlightenment was interested in nature as a source of reason and order (exemplified by Newtonian mechanics), the Romantic found in it organic growth and diversity. For the Romantic, the natural and the supernatural are entwined, giving nature an emotional and spiritual force that is alien to Enlightenment thinking. In addition, romanticism marked a renewed interest in medieval and even pagan culture. The Romantic therefore turned to the Gothic (culminating in the revival of Gothic architecture), and where classicism had looked to Greek and Roman mythology, romanticism looked to European mythology and folk culture (for example in the German Nibelungenlied, or the Finnish Kalevala). Above all, romanticism celebrates the exceptional individual. Writing towards the end of the eighteenth century and beginning
of the nineteenth, Friedrich and August Wilhelm von Schlegel are key figures in the development of romanticism. Both emphasise the fluid and fragmentary nature of the Romantic work of art. For Friedrich, Romantic poetry is always in a state of becoming, and thus never achieves the perfection or harmonious coherence to which classical art aspires. For August, the Romantic is encapsulated in the problem of interpretation, and the ultimate incomprehensibility of the work of art. His doctrine of Romantic irony stresses the paradoxical nature of the poem, so that no objective or definitive meaning can ever be derived from it. In drama, Shakespeare is celebrated for his ironic detachment from his characters. He is thus able to
portray contradictory positions, through the opposition of characters, without resolving the drama in favour of one viewpoint. In philosophy, the emergence of romanticism may be associated
with the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, both in his criticism of the corrupting effect of contemporary civilisation on humanity, in the emotional and sentimental tone of his novel, Julie, ou la Nouvelle He´loi?se, and in the self-exploration of the Confessions. As Rousseau turns to the image of a state of nature, prior to civilisation, in order to recover an image of a noble and uncorrupted humanity, so the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) turns to folk cultures and to non-European cultures, understanding them not as primitive precursors of European civilisation, but as having their own validity, and their own criteria of meaning and excellence. While Herder writes in reaction to the rationalism of Kant, Kant himself stands in a complex relationship to romanticism. His ethics are dominated by reason, but his theory of knowledge and aesthetics explores the limits of knowledge and reason (constraining scientific enquiry in order to make ‘room for faith’). However, it is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), himself reinterpreting Kant, who is the purest example of a Romantic philosopher. His pessimistic account of the world in terms of the continual strivings of the will, from which art provides one of the few sources of relief, was influential on the archetypal Romantic artist, Richard Wagner.
