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Romanticism
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Definition
Artistic and intellectual movement that originated in the earlylate 18th century and stressed strong emotion, imagination,
freedom from classical correctness in art forms, and rebellion
against social conventions... Romanticism can be seen as a
rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance,
idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and
late 18th-century Neoclassicism in particular. It was also to some
extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century
rationalism and physical materialism in general. Romanticism
emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the
imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the
visionary, and the transcendental.
Nicolas Pioch, Web Museum: Romanticism, http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/romanticism/, visited 18 April 2002
In a Nutshell …
It dealt with that which was beyond
humanity’s power to really control:
Nature
Characteristics
a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature
a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over
intellect
a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human
personality and its moods and mental potentialities
a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure in
general, and a focus on his passions and inner struggles
a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose
creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and
traditional procedures; an emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to
transcendent experience and spiritual truth
an obsessive interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural
origins, and the medieval era
a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the
occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.
Nicolas Pioch, Web Museum: Romanticism, http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/romanticism/, visited 18 April 2002
Ozymandis By Percy Bysshe Shelley
“I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
5
10
The Percy Bysshe Shelley Page, gopher://gopher.english.upenn.edu/00/Courses/Curran202/Shelley/ozy,visited 18 April
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
“With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the
instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being
into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet… I saw the dull yellow eye of
the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion
agitated its limbs…
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings
of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole
purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had
deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour
that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the
beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust
filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had
created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time
traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
"I expected this reception," said the daemon. "All men hate the
wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond
all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy
creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by
the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare
you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do
mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with
my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you
refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the
blood of your remaining friends."
"Abhorred monster! fiend that thou art! the tortures of hell are too
mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! you reproach me
with your creation; come on, then, that I may extinguish the spark
which I so negligently bestowed." My rage was without bounds; I
sprang on him, impelled by all the feelings which can arm one
Frankenstein
"Great God! why did I not then
expire! Why am I here to relate
the destruction of the best hope
and the purest creature of earth.
She was there, lifeless and
inanimate, thrown across the
bed, her head hanging down,
and her pale and distorted
features half covered by her
hair. Every where I turn I see
the same figure--her bloodless
arms and relaxed form flung by
the murderer on its bridal
bier."--Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein
Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare
Web Resources for Women Writers,
http://hss.fullerton.edu/english/astein/fuseli.htm , visited 17
April 2002
Industrialism- Modern Frankenstein
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, http://www.sciflicks.com/metropolis/images/metropolis_09.html, visited 17 April 2002
Industrialism- Modern Frankenstein
Industrialism- Modern Frankenstein
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, http://www.sciflicks.com/metropolis/images/metropolis_18.html, visited 17 April 2002
Industrialism- Modern Frankenstein
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, http://www.sciflicks.com/metropolis/images/metropolis_02.html, visited 17 April 2002
Industrialism- Modern Frankenstein
Industrialism- Modern Frankenstein
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis,
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/5555/robot
.jpg, visited 17 April 2002
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis,
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/5555/rotwa
ng_and_robot.jpg, visited 17 April 2002
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, http://www.sciflicks.com/metropolis/images/metropolis_01.html, visited 17 April 2002
Blake: Tyger
1 Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
2 In the forests of the night,
3 What immortal hand or eye
4 Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
13 What the hammer? what the chain?
14 In what furnace was thy brain?
15 What the anvil? what dread grasp
16 Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
5 In what distant deeps or skies
6 Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
7 On what wings dare he aspire?
8 What the hand dare seize the fire?
17 When the stars threw down their spears,
18 And water'd heaven with their tears,
19 Did he smile his work to see?
20 Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
9 And what shoulder, and what art,
21 Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
10 Could twist the sinews of thy heart,
22 In the forests of the night,
11 And when thy heart began to beat,
23 What immortal hand or eye,
12 What dread hand? and what dread feet? 24 Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Blake, W., Tyger, http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/blake17.html, visited 17 April 2002
Art
John Constable,
The Hay-Wain,
1821, oil on
canvas, The
National Gallery,
London
Constable abhorred the idea of `running after pictures and seeking the truth at
second hand'. He thought that `No two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither
were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world',
Web Museum, http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/constable/, visted 17 April 2002
Art
John Constable, Stonehenge, 1836, watercolor, Victoria and Albert Museum,
London.
Paintings & Reproductions, http://www.artunframed.com/john_constable2.htm, visited 17 April 2002
Art
Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in an Oak Forest, 1809-10, oil on canvas
CFGA, http://sunsite.dk/cgfa/friedric/p-friedrich4.htm, visited 17 April 2002
Art
Friedrich, Caspar David, Cloister Cemetery in the Snow, 1817-19, Oil on
canvas, 121 x 170 cm, Destroyed 1945, formerly in the National Gallery, Berlin
Mark Harden’s Artchive, http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm, visited 17 April 2002
Art
Friedrich, Caspar David,
Tetschen Altar or Cross in the
Mountains, 1807-08, Oil on canvas, 115
x 110 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
Russian Gothic Project,
http://art.gothic.ru/paint/friedrich/show_e.htm?6.jpg ,
visited 17 April 2002
"Close your bodily eye, so that you
may see your picture first with the
spiritual eye. Then bring to the light
of day that which you have seen in
the darkness so that it may react
upon others from the outside inwards.
Painters train themselves in inventing
or, as they call it, composing. Does
not that mean perhaps, in other
words that they train themselves in
patching and mending? A picture
must not be invented but felt. Observe
the form exactly, both the smallest
and the large and do not separate the
small from the large, but rather the
trivial from the important.”
C.D. Freidrich Selected Works, http://www.hearts-ease.org/cgi-bin/gallery_works.cgi?ID=19 , visited, 17 April 2002
Art
Friedrich, Caspar David
Wanderer Above the Sea of
Fog
c. 1818
Oil on canvas
94.8 x 74.8 cm
Kunsthalle, Hamburg
The Artchive,
http://artchive.com/artchive/F/friedrich/sea_of_fo
g.jpg.html, visited 17 April 2002
Art
Turner, Joseph Mallord William, Dido building Carthage; or the Rise of the
Carthaginian Empire, 1815, Oil on canvas, 155.5 x 232 cm, National Gallery, London
Mark Harden’s Artchive, http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm, visited 17 April 2002
Art
Turner, Joseph Mallord William,
Shade and Darkness - the Evening
of the Deluge, 1843, Oil on
canvas, 78.5 x 78 cm, Tate
Gallery, London
Mark Harden’s Artchive, http://artchive.
com/ftp_site.htm, visited 17 April 2002
"Turner outgrew theatrical
extravagance but the essential
sublimity of the forces that hold
man in their grip remained with
him always. There is a sense of it
in the all-embracing flood of light
that envelops a scene, and the
spectator too. The last subjects of
storm and catastrophe make
visible a dream of peril and
endurance that is full of heroic
exaltation. The elemental drama
that Turner painted was both real
and imaginary.” Wilson, S., Tate Gallery:
An Illustrated Companion
Art
Turner, Joseph Mallord William, Rain, Steam and Speed, 1844, Oil on canvas,
35 3/4 x 48 in. (90.8 x 121.9 cm), National Gallery, London
Mark Harden’s Artchive, http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm, visited 17 April 2002
Art
Turner, Joseph Mallord William,
Rain, Steam and Speed, Detail of
Locomotive, 1844, Oil on canvas,
35 3/4 x 48 in. (90.8 x 121.9 cm),
National Gallery, London
Mark Harden’s Artchive, http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm,
visited 17 April 2002