Romantic Literature Research Essay

Romantic Literature Research Essay

While the French Revolution was ending, another revolution was starting (Frerichs 2). A revolution that changed literature, art, music, and drama forever by giving people change (Fitzpatrick 1). This revolution is called the Romantic Movement or Romanticism. Romanticism is literature, art, music, and drama that depict emotional matter in an imaginative state (Fitzpatrick 1).
Romanticism in literature started in 1798, when William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the first edition of Lyrical Ballads and when Prussian Saxony Oberwiederstedt, otherwise known as Novalis, wrote Hymns to the Night (Frerichs 4). These writings are important because they were the first writings that went against the neoclassic style of that period which dealt with the polite upper and middle classes of the cities (Moss 1). The Romanticism style, on the other hand, was a more open, emotional style that thought about nature and the common person (Moss 1). As Frerichs explained, most people think that romance literature fits into the Romantic period (Frerichs). It doesn’t. Frerichs felt that Romantic fits into the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th century (Frerichs 1).
As Weston described, imagination was a huge part of the Romantics style. They tended to define it as the ultimate shaping power for the brain that is important to all humans (Weston 1). William Wordsworth suggested that “we not only perceive the world around us, but also in part create it” (Weston 2). Weston also added that Romantics thought that imagination was an active power that has many functions (Weston 2). Imagination was very important to the Romanticist style.
Nature meant many things to the Romantics. Firstly, it meant beauty and power in the external world and secondly it was expression of power that flows through and unites everything, including mankind (Moss 1). They often varied their perspective of nature from a healing power to a source that they could use in their art and...

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