Title: Overview of Romanticism in Literature
Headings: Overview of Romanticism in Literature
Overview of Romanticism in Literature
Content: Overview of Romanticism in Literature



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Overview of Romanticism in Literature
Posted by Nicole Smith , Dec 6, 2011 Poetry Comments Closed Print
In the most basic sense, Romanticism, which is loosely identified as spanning the years of 1783-1830, 12 can be distinguished from the preceding period called the Enlightenment by observing that the one elevated the role of spirit, soul, instinct, and emotion, while the other advocated a cool, detached scientific approach to most human endeavors and dilemmas. 3 In short, Romanticism in literature was a rejection of many of the values movements such as the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution held as paramount. Romanticism, initiated by the English poets such as Coleridge and Wordsworth, as well as Blake, Keats, Shelley, was concentrated primarily in the creative expressions of literature and the arts; however, the philosophy and sentiment characteristic of the Romanticism movement would spread throughout Europe and would ultimately impact not only the arts and humanities, but the society at large, permanently changing the ways in which human emotions, relationships, and institutions were viewed, understood, and artistically and otherwise reflected. As Bloom and Trilling observe, some of the most cherished ideals of the Romantic Age have not been lost with the passage of time. On the contrary, “Romanticism [has become] an ageless and recurrent phenomenon". 4
The Enlightenment was the name given to the period that preceded the Romantic Age, and it is in understanding the key features of the Enlightenment that one can best understand how the characteristics of Romanticism came to be, and how they differed so radically from those of the industrialized era. The Enlightenment had developed and championed logic and reason above all other qualities and there was little room in this worldview for the emotion-based nature that would define Romanticism.