il romanticismo inglese (sintesi)

The Romanticism develops as reaction to the Enlightenment and the Neoclassicism, that is a

reaction to the rationality and the cult of the classical beauty. The Romanticism contrasts in fact

spirituality, emotionalism, imagination, and the affirmation of the individual characters.

For this reason the main themes of the romantic movement are:

- Negation of the reason: the romanticism refuses the Enlightenment idea of the reason, because

it wasn’t able to explain the totality of the things. For this reason in the romantic age there is a

great progress in the exploration of the irrational: dream, visions assume a role of primary

importance.

- Individualism: with the lack of the Enlightenment reason, everything that surrounds the man

doesn't have a rational key of reading, so every man reflects himself in the nature.

- Concept of people and nation: the individualism on great dimensions becomes a form of

nationalism, that culminates for example in the search of ancient origins of the nations, for this

reason develops the interest for the middle age.

- The return to the religion: with the missing of the support of the Enlightenment reason, the

romantic man looks for stable supports in the faith and in the tension toward the infinity

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The Romantic Period

The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions had brought an economic progress, but also a very bad

conditions for many people. For this reason, many artists called Romantics, started to fight against

dehumanisation and regimentation of the new urban industrial society. They wanted to break with

the Past, with Rationalism. The cultural movement involved writers, philosophers and artists from

Germany, France, Italy and England.

Pre-Romanticism

Scholars usually marks the start of the Romantic period in Britain in 1789. In this year Wordsworth

and Coleridge published the ‘Lyrical Ballads’.

In Europe, many philosophers began to have some romantic aspects in the last years of the XVIII

century. For example, Rousseau exalted man’s emotional capacities, Kant questioned the validity

of scientific empiricism.

The writers which represented the pre-romantic movement of the ‘Sturm und Drang’ were Goethe,

Schiller and Herder.