Romanticism and Pre-Romanticism: Authors and Key Themes
Romanticism: A 19th-Century Literary Movement
Romanticism was the first literary movement that broke the molds of what came before and represents the first valid formulation of a contemporary mentality. It emerged following the crisis in Europe after the French Revolution and developed in the mid-19th century. Its features include:
- Individualism: Individualism and the right to freedom in the public, moral, and religious order are exalted. Therefore, the protagonists will be marginalized beings, rebels, etc.
- Sentimentality: The cult of reason is replaced by the cult of sentiment. These changing moods are projected onto the landscape. Subjectivism is loaded. Woman is the other main theme of Romanticism, as she is for writers a creature who is sometimes good and sometimes bad.
- Idealism: To aspire to ideals leads the Romantic into a collision with reality that leads them to flight. Life revolves around a problem with two attitudes: metaphysical angst or evasion.
- Political and Physiological Concerns: God, the soul, the meaning of life and death are the main themes of Romantic authors.
Pre-Romanticism: Sturm und Drang
In the last third of the 18th century, German writers began to question the principles of Neoclassicism: feelings take precedence over reason, they reject the rules, etc. Goethe and Schiller followed the principles of this movement called Sturm und Drang, but both turned to the classical ideal of moderation and balance.
Goethe: A Literary Giant
Goethe is the maximum literary figure in Germany. He studied law and had great intelligence that made him a great sage. He began imitating Sturm und Drang until he traveled to Italy and evolved into a difficult classicism. He cultivated all literary genres and left at least one masterpiece in each. He recreated varied universes such as medieval Germany and ancient Greece.
Novel and Poetry
The Sorrows of Young Werther, his first novel, made Goethe a guide of the Sturm und Drang. To this period belong the Roman Elegies, a book of classic poems that serves to wrap the emotion of the poet who sings of love and the Roman ruins. Also notable is Hermann and Dorothea (a love story).
Theatre
Goethe wrote plays on historical themes (Egmont, Torquato Tasso), mythological themes (Iphigenia), and legendary themes (Faust). The covenant between man and the devil, which is the focus of pomp, appeared in a German legend in the 6th century. Faust merges various genres and techniques, which makes it impossible to represent. The work dramatizes the human endeavor to overcome the limitations imposed by its nature, both physical and intellectual.
Schiller: Champion of Freedom
All of Schiller’s work is inspired by the great ideals that inspired his life: freedom, love, justice, etc. His first dramas are influenced by the Sturm und Drang. In The Bandits, a young nobleman becomes a bandit to defend justice. In Fiesco’s Conspiracy, the protagonist seeks to seize power but is assassinated. Don Carlos is a hymn to freedom of expression and tolerance. In his last years, he composed more classic and thoughtful works, such as The Maid of Orleans and William Tell, his most popular drama.
Poetry
Privacy issues are the poet’s sentimental vision of nature and the ideal of a just society. Romantic poets mix short poems with long poems, where the characters are mysterious rebels and outcasts. They reject metric rigidity and use all sorts of lines and stanzas.
England: Two Generations
The Lake Poets
Wordsworth was orphaned early, and after a trip to France, he became a supporter of revolutionary ideas. He rejected any kind of oppression. His friendship with Coleridge was necessary for the development of their work. Coleridge was a restless man of adventurous outbursts. Like Wordsworth, he wrote Lyrical Ballads together, inspired by revolutionary ideals. Wordsworth seeks inspiration for his poems in the beauty of the everyday and nature. Coleridge prefers mysterious characters.
The Satanic Poets
The poets of the second generation made their lives and their work an act of rebellion against the society of the time.
Byron: He gave life to rebel characters in his poems through which he expressed contempt for society and skepticism. Notable is Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, where he describes the experiences of his travels. Cain is an anti-Christian interpretation of creation, and the myth of Don Juan is that of the seducer.
Shelley: He is a poet with great formal perfection. Notable are his idealist works Mont Blanc, Ode to the West Wind, and Adonais.
Keats: He died in Rome of tuberculosis. He was poor and is the purest poet of Romanticism, where what he is looking for is beauty. Notable are his odes.