Ideas of the Romantics essays

Ideas of the Romantics essays Romanticism in itself is a current that manifested itself in the late 1700s and quickly swept throughout Europe. One of its characteristics is its universality: its field of manifestation was widespread and went form painting, art, music to literature. The Romantic current generally has some common features that can be traced across all its areas of manifestation. I am referring here to its sources of inspiration (generally folklore and popular art) or to the nationalistic innuendos that the romantic works make (for example, let us consider the French Romantic paintings, full of such themes). Some of the Romantic works, especially the literary ones, call upon the Middle Ages as a source of inspiration, a period that best encouraged the Romantic imagination. However, one of the most important elements of the Romantic Movement is the romantic character himself. A romantic character generally has several common characteristics which make him recognizable from the every beginning. One of these is individualism. The rise of capitalism and mercantilism destabilized the old medieval patterns and it was most often the case that the new bourgeois refused to fit into the old order and "developed their own tastes in the arts and created new social and artistic movements alien to the old aristocracy"[1]. The direct effect that this phenomenon had in art and literature was that, if before the Church and aristocracy usually shared the same ideas and tastes, the new society presented a numerous association of individualistic people, where any artists or writer could find a sympathetic audience that would pay for his work. Thus, the individualism developed in the society reflected itself in the arts and literature as well and every artist could now create according Literary heroes like Faust helped create and better define the romantic hero. We are faced here with chara...