The Romantic Movement
Romanticism is a new intellectual and artistic
movement that involved Europe in the 18th
century. The word Romantic was first used around the middle of the 17th
century to mean the fantastic events told by old romances. During the Augustan
Age which highlighted order, balance and correctness, the term romantic was
used in a derogatory way. However "romantic" got a positive meaning again,
mirroring the change in sensibility. In fact it started being used to mean an
expression of feelings and emotions shaded with melancholy and sadness. This
word was used also by Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Schlegel. Rousseau used
"Romantic" to describe a landscape; Schlegel used this term to describe the
creative process led by the emotion and imagination. In England the
authors never used this term to define the qualities of their poetry. The romantic movement got to his apogee thanks to the debate
developed in Europe during the latter part of
the 18th century. In this period the works of Rousseau and the
German movement of Sturm und Drang were very
important. In Discours sur l'origine de l'inegalitè
Rousseau contended that human behaviour, which for his nature is good, became
bad owing the social conventions. So he advocated a return to nature which should
make man a noble savage good, happy and free. The writers involved in Sturm und
Drang emphasized the uniqueness and the freedom of
the individual. These features were expressed with the ure of the genius,
who is a creative artists. The basical
philosophy of Romanticism has been the German idealism theorized by Fichte,
Hegel, Wilhelm, Schelling. They expressed the will to
get to the Absolute or the infinite beyond the limits imposed by reason and
recognized a creative, dynamic spiritual force at work in the world which moved
incessantly towards its own realization. For Fichte it was the Ego, for
Shelling it was the Absolute, for Hegel it was the Ideal.
