Romanticism 1800-1850
Uploaded by kelizabeth on Sep 04, 2008
Romanticism
“Each night, Leander would swim across a stretch of sea to meet his lover Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite. She would guide him by holding up a torch. One night, during a storm, Leander drowned. The grief stricken Hero threw herself from a tower. Here, the two dead lovers are shown in their tragic final embrace as their lives drift away” (Butler, Van Cleave, Sterling 152) This is the typical semblance of art in the romantic era portrayed by William Etty, one of many artists of this time. Often portraying bold single emotions such as fear, true love, desolation and victory, many romantic artists used natural colors and flesh/ naturalistic tones as well as flowery words to show the reality of emotion. Driving away from portrayals of religion and history, realistic scenes were shown through sculpture, painting, poetry and other media’s.
Romanticism began at the beginnings of the eighteenth century with visual artists such as Jacques-Louis David and Thomas Gainsborough as well as literary artists such as William Wordsworth who looked to create a new kind of poetry emphasizing on perception over reason and William Blake, writer of The marriage of Heaven and Hell. The romantic era began as a reaction against the intellectualism of the Enlightenment, a philosophical movement in the 18th century focusing on religion and politics, against the inflexibility of social structures protecting privilege, and against the ever growing materialism budding in people of the eighteenth century. Unlike other movements, such as classicism, the romantic era had no visible boundaries; the theory was that people needed to be free to divulge their deepest emotions, express their inner imagination and move away from the strict attitudes previously exemplified. In an essence, the romantic era was a very emotional, expressive, quiet rebellion.
In the United States, one of the most popular literary artist was Edgar Allen Poe. Poe is known as the creator of the short story as well as the detective story. Poe focused greatly on creating one great emotion in his stories be it fear, horror or distress. He wrote numerous short stories, a few examples being The Tell Tale Heart, The pit and the Pendulum as well as Diddling. Another great literary artist of the Romantic era was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe was born in Germany where he remained until he passed leaving behind many great writings such as the novel The Sorrows of Young...