Title: What is romanticism? - Quora
Headings: What is romanticism?
What is romanticism?
Content: The primacy of the individual, especially against trails of nature and society. Often, the romantic movement places importance on the individual, which also harkens back to romantic pieces (think Yvaine the Knight of the Lion, Gwain and the Green Knight, The Greek Alexander Romance, Jason and the argonauts, etc. etc. ). These stories do not share the narrative space as well as others, and tend to be about the prowess of, or failure and success of, the characters for which they are named. The romantics of the English tradition in particular drew inspiration from the devil in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, perhaps particularly because the devil is an anti-hero who tries to find reason within the world he has been forced to inhabit by both choice and punishment. Thus again, the focus returns to the individual. The concept of the Sublime plays an important role in Romanticism. Those things which are both attractive and terrifyingly dangerous: perilous mountain passes with gorgeous vistas, the tundra of the Antarctic, thunderstorms on an open plain. It was part of a larger aesthetic philosophy surrounding conceptions of beauty and the environment of the time.