Title: Notes on the Romantic Age
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Important themes
Content: Romanticism was in some ways a reaction to the 18th century. That century, also known as the age of reason, had witnessed a series of prolonged attacks on many fronts to the idea of an individual self. During these years, for example, Europe underwent rapid industrialization. This in turn created socioeconomic changes that shifted the population from a rural, agrarian way of life to a more depersonalized urban lifestyle. Consequently, people became distanced from nature. In addition, large-scale mechanized industries sprang up and changed the character of work. The factory system with its regimented hours and mindless repetition seemed to make human beings mere interchangeable parts in an impersonal process. The 18th Century also saw the rise of radically skeptical philosophers who doubted the very existence of an individual self. The philosopher David Hume argued that the self Descartes believed himself to have found was only a product of cultural situatedness, and the German philosopher Imannuel Kant saw the self as an empty fiction accompanying on-going thought. In the face of these social and philosophical attacks, Romantic writers, philosophers and artists tried to reassert the importance of the self.