The Romantic Period and William Blake

Romantic period? -William Blake Nowadays when people talked about “romantic” or “romance”, usually indicated that of the opposite of ration and reason. Rousseau pointed out that romance is to go back to nature, However, Heine in the other way thought that romance is to go back to the life style of middle age, while Hugo considered romance as the combination of tragedy and quaintness. Romance to me, is the opposite of civilization, ration, and reality, just like the typical tension between passion and ration displayed in Madame Bovery, the protagonist Madame Bovery had life struggles between pursuing her dreams and passion and living an ordinary life with a dull husband. It was also a struggle between love and bread. Actually, the word romance is hard to define. Rene Wellek conceded that there are three dimensions of romantic criterion, which are imagination, nature and symbol and myth, based on this three aspects of looking at romance, we can probably sum up all kinds of romance. There are a lot of definition of romance in dictionary, such as some of the definition mentioned in J.A. Cuddon’s A Dictionary of Literary Terms, which are interests on natural elements, and primal, natural, uncivilized world, inclination of focus on scenery, intertwining the human spirit to the natural world, and attention on imagination. And of course, praising the noble savages. Romantic era had been literary fashion in the approximate age in first half of 19 century. It’s usually considered to be the counter-revolution to industrial revolution and intellectual behave of Enlightenment. Romanticism was originated from Europe and it was meant to participate in reaction of revolt against scientific “truth”, fact and rationality. These elements were embodied intensely in literature as a lot of great writers had done in romantic period. Except for industrial revolution and era of enlightenment, the historical background of romantic period was within an age after