The Romantic Era

Everyone in this society has his or her own definition of the word “romantic.” The word gives off the notion of “sentiment and sentimentality, a visionary or idealistic lack of reality. It connotes fantasy and fiction. It has been associated with different times and with distant places: the island of Bali, the world of the Arabian Nights, the age of the troubadours and even Manhattan.”(Kreis) Romanticism is used all over the world as it relates to many different things. From advertisements in stores to billboards all over the country there is some sort of display of romanticism in everything. Advertisements that show jewelry stores, make up, and even things as simple as brands of gum are some examples of where romanticism is used in everyday life. “The Romantic era was a time of great change and emancipation. While the Classical era had strict laws of balance and restraint, the Romantic era moved away from that by allowing artistic freedom, experimentation, and creativity. The music of this time period was very expressive, and melody became the dominant feature. Composers even used this expressive means to display nationalism. This became a driving force in the late Romantic period, as composers used elements of folk music to express their cultural identity.”(library.thinkquest.org)
Throughout history there has been disputes about the real meaning of what romantic really means. Does it have full meaning when someone says “a romantic, candle lit dinner”? or if someone says that watching the sunset was “a romantic setting”? No one really knows the actual meaning of the word. “But literary historians and critics as well as European historians have been quarreling over the meaning of the word Romanticism for decades, as Lovejoy's comment above makes abundantly clear. One of the problems is that the Romantics were liberals and conservatives, revolutionaries and reactionaries. Some were preoccupied with God, others were atheistic to the core. Some began