What is Romanticism?
In literature, it was a movement that took place in most countries of the Western World in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
It was thought of as a counter-Enlightenment movement.
The Romantic period was a very important period of the history of the England.
Romantics generally believed in the uniqueness of individual expression as it is attributed by life experience, an important dimension of which is frequently national character.
The Nature of Romanticism
Romanticism is concerned with the individual life more than with society.
Romanticism was concentrated primarily in the creative expressions of literature and the arts.
Romanticism has become an ageless and recurrent phenomenon.
Romanticism emerged as a reaction against what was perceived to be a cultural climate that had been lacking in spontaneity, creativity and individuality.
Romanticism was creative, innovating and exploratory.
The Romantic Movement (In England)
The first wave of the Romantic Movement came in England and Germany near the close of 18th century.
In England the way gradually had much of that century.
Lyrical Ballad represented a sharp break with the neoclassical tradition.
Other major Britist Romantics were Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Thomas Carlyle, and Sir Walter Scott.
After the historical novel, the most extensive fictional form for the Romantics was the Gothic novel.
For the reader of popular fiction, the Gothic novel successfully joined several aspects of Romanticism:
The supernatural
Emphasis on intense feeling
Interest in the past
Concern with remote settings, and
The melancholy,
Mysterious and fascinating figure often called the “Byronic