浪漫主義 Romanticism 簡短介紹

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that started in the late 18th century and continued into the 19th century and the latest 1850. It was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. It was also associated with radicalism and liberalism because the movement coincided with the French Revolution and its aftermath.

Contrary to the Age of Enlightenment, which saw reason as the ultimate goal, Romanticism valued strong emotions such as awe, terror, and apprehension especially in facing the sublimity of untamed nature. It elevated folk art and daily speech to something worthy of literary representation. It also revived medievalism to escape the confines of the Industrial Revolution and its ugliness. It also embraced the exotic, especially Orientalism.

Common themes in Romanticism include the cult of sensibility, which focuses on women and children, the evocation of the past, the isolation of the artist or poet, respect for untamed nature, unbridled emotions, the supernatural or the occult, human psychology, and the artist' originality.

The first English Romantic poet is Thomas Chatterton of the 18th century. The Scottish poet James Macpherson published his Ossian cycle of poems in the 18th century, and his poems influenced Goethe and Walter Scott.

The Gothic novel such as Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) was one type of romantic literature. It emphasises horror and threat and exotic locations.

One of the most famous German romantic writers is Goethe, whose Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) is about a young, sensitive, and passionate man. Goethe's work had an impact on developing a unifying sense of nationalism. Important topics in German Romanticism include traveling, nature, folklore, childhood innocence, imagination, children's literature, and Germanic myths. The German Romanticism such as Hoffmann's The Sandman (1817) and von Eichendorff's The Marble Statue (1819) have gothic elements. Brentano and von Arnim published 'The Boy's Magic Horn' together in 1806-08. The Brothers Grimm published Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1812. The fairy tales in Grimms are based on folklore and not invented by them.

In English, the key figures of the Romantic movement were Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Shelley, and Blake. Wordworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads in 1798, which many see as the beginning of English Romanticism. Many of the poems by Wordsworth are about the lives of the poor in the Lake District, his emotions and his feelings about nature. One of the most famous poems in the collection is Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is gothic in style and exotic in setting. The Lake Poets were considered marginal figures of the movement. Lord Byron and Walter Scott, on the other hand, achieved fame throughout Europe. Scott was known for his The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and his epic poem Marmion (1808). Both are set in the distant Scottish past. Scott also invented the historical novel with his Waverley (1814), which is about the 1745 Jacobite Rising. Byron was known for his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812), four 'Turkish Tales,' which drew on his Grand Tour which had reached Ottoman Empire and which orientalised the gothic theme. Byron contributed to the image of the Byronic hero. Another famous work is his unfinished satire Don Juan. He died in 1824 from disease helping the Greek War of Independence. His personal life and death all contributed to the legend of Lord Byron.

In contrast to Germany, English Romanticism did not invoke nationalism or patriotism. Instead, the English romantics were sometimes viewed with suspicion for sympathising with the French Revolution. Though Scott set his works in Scotland, he was a strong Unionist himself.

The most significant novelist in England in this period was Jane Austen. Though she believed in decorum and social rules, romantic themes can be found in her works too. By the mid-19th century, there were also the Bronte sisters. The most famous works are Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847).