Romanticism

Romanticism

How have the Composers you have Studied Shaped and Reflected the Nature of Romanticism?

The Romantic ideals arose as implicit and explicit criticisms of 19th century Enlightenment which was seen to block the freedom of the emotions and creativity. The Romantic Movement is seen as a reaction against the reason and Enlightenment of the 19th Century; due to the Romantics powerful need to reclaim their freedom from a utilitarian society. They believed in use of the Imagination as the vehicle of self expression, holding strong beliefs in their perceptions of the Ideal; they glorified Idealism in a world they considered robotic, seeking Nature’s glorious diversity of detail, especially in its moral and emotional relationship with mankind. A chief concern of the Romantics was the exploration of the ‘human condition’, that is the deeper, often negative side of humanity, such as pain, suffering, death and how people cope with such.   This exploration of the human condition is highlighted in John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn and La Belle Dame sans Merci (both 1819), Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot (1842), Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven (1845). CONCLUDING SENTENCE!

John Keats is considered by many to have epitomised everything that the Romantics stood for he reveled in the inspiration and admiration of Nature that led to the pantheistic beliefs of many Romantics. However the death of his brother and his own imminent demise attest for his focus on transience in many of his poems. A tone of admiration for Nature in Ode on a Grecian Urn is created through the explicit accumulation of nature and natural elements such as “dales, trees Spring, Pastoral” this encapsulates the Omni-present natural inspiration felt by Keats. The specific details and questions asked of the urn and thus us, as the responder, such as; “What wild ecstasy?”   Convey life’s potential idealism and how for Keats this escapes his...