Go to http://library.thinkquest.org/C0126184/english/texthome.htm for direct links to accompanying text files. 


Articles:
The Movement -->

------------What is Romanticism?------------------- 

What time the mighty moon was gathering light
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him roll'd his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in view,
Death, walking all alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his sight.
'You must begone,' said Death, 'these walks are mine.'
Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;
Yet ere he parted said, 'This hour is thine:
Thou art the shadow of life, and as the tree
Stands in the sun and shadows all beneath,
So in the light of great eternity
Life eminent creates the shade of death.
The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,
But I shall reign for ever over all.'
-"Love and Death" by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1883)
Love prevails over death, emotions govern life and thought, and the will of the human spirit is valued over logic and reason-such was the cultural philosophy that dominated the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. Christened the Romantic Movement, it flourished in Europe and America for approximately a hundred years, during which time it swept away tradition in literature, painting, sculpture, drama, music, opera, and ballet. 
The Romantic Movement first took root in Germany and then England in the 1780s. With the decline of Neoclassicism and the Enlightenment, and the American and French Revolutions, the movement shook the rest of Europe and lighted across the seas in the second wave to America. The ideals and tenets were the exact opposite of Neoclassicism, which emphasized order, logic, emotional restraint, balance, science, and reason. However, as the industrial revolution gained its footing in England, and cities began to grow, the ideals were reevaluated and emotions, individuality, and nature overshadowed Neoclassicism. 
The entomology of the word "romantic" is also of some interest. It was first used to describe medieval romances in the mid-1600s. After that, however, "romantic" was associated with anything that opposed truth and fact. Later the term connoted with the opposition to reason by German and British poets of the late 18th century. Now, the term describes the entire literary and artistic movement. 
The movement was extremely popular in literature. In America, Romanticism was defined by the "five I's:" inspiration, intuition, innocence, imagination, and inner experience. These tenets gave rise to many Romantic writers, who stressed the innate goodness of man, favored the individual over the group, revered nature, and rebelled against political authority. Thus, the Romantic hero-youthful, innocent, intuitive, in touch with nature and out of touch with civilization-was created These authors were met with some resistance by the Dark Romantics, which declared humans inherently evil and acknowledged guilt and sin. But all Romantics believed in signs and symbols in human and natural events and considered intuition the superior of logic and reason. Nature was also a particularly common subject and is consistently used in American Transcendentalism and British poetry and prose. Thus the written word was an important tool in conveying the ideals of the Romantic movement.
In art, the movement stretched from 1800 to 1850. It can be described as highly imaginative, emotional, and visionary. Romantic artists constantly desired to show the mysterious and wild aspects of nature, and were motivated by passion, drama, and melancholy. Specifically, this was demonstrated by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England. In music, the movement was concentrated in 1828 and 1880 and spanned from 1789 to 1914. Individuality, intensity of feeling, sweetly gloomy tones (morbidezza), optimism, and nationalism were displayed by Romantic composers in the production of operas, ballets, and symphonies. 
Overall, Romanticism cannot be succinctly defined-only loosely translated, for no amount of words can describe the creativity and power of any particular movement. But the spirit of Romanticism has and will influence countless generations to come. 
Sources: 
Romanticism. Ed. Paul Brians. March 1998. Washington State U. 21 Sept. 2000 <http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html>
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. "Love and Death." Biography, anthology and poems of 19th Century British and American Poets. June. 2001. <http://www.2020site.org/poetry/>
"Romanticism (literature)," Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com (c) 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Noyes, Russell. English Romantic Poetry and Prose. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. 

-------------The Origins of Romanticism---------------------

Some of the earliest traces of Romanticism draw back to the mid 1700s when folklore storytellers like the Grimm brothers or Johann Gottfried von Herder emerged. Drawn mostly from oral narratives, the 210 stories in the Grimms' collection represented an anthology of fairy tales, animal fables, rustic farces, and religious allegories that touch many aspects of life even in the status quo. Johann Gottfired von Herder was a leading German Romantic who produced Stimmen der Völker, an anthology of folk songs. In England, artists like Joseph Addison and Richard Steele examined archaic ballads as if they were high poetry. And thus, these artists singled themselves out and set a fundamental principle for Romanticism; they believed that ideas of an unorthodox imagination was equal to or better than the ideas of educated court poets and composers who monopolized the attentions scholars and connoisseurs. 
Nationalism resulted as a natural consequence of widespread creative folk genius. In France, the formative stage of Romanticism coincided with the Napoleonic Wars, which inspired earlier romantics who painted with themes of battle. Painter Peter Paul Rubens had a series of battle paintings glorifying Napoleon. Thédore Géricault shifted for the emphasis of battle from heroism to suffering and endurance. Géricault's masterpiece, Raft of the Medusa (1818-19, Louvre) portrays the suffering of ordinary humanity, a theme echoed by many others. Delacrox, inspired by English romantic poet Lord Byron, painted his Death of Sardanapalus which had the effect of chaos engulfing the immobile and indifferent figure of the king. 
William Shakespeare influenced Dramatic romantics. Although he is looked upon as the epitome of a great writer, his reputation was very different when he was alive. Before Shakespeare, dramatic concepts were derived from ancient Roman and Greek patterns, and critics scorned Shakespeare's unorthodoxy in style as he intermingled ideas of comedy with tragedy or proliferated plots and subplots.
The English romantics glorified Shakespeare's works and the German romantics welcomed his style with open arms. French classical theater had been the preeminent model for drama in much of Europe; but when the German Romantics began to explore and translate Shakespeare's plays, they were overwhelmed. His disregard for the classical rules inspired them. Writers like Friedrich von Schiller and Goethe created their own dramas inspired by Shakespeare. Faust contains many Shakespearian allusions as well as imitating all of the nonclassical qualities enumerated above. Romantics regarded Shakespeare as the essence of folk poetry. His influence of European Drama of the 1800s was enormous and he was also a sprinting board for young romantic painters, composers, and operas. 
While classical art often referred to the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Romantics embraced the wilder aspects of creativity of Western Europeans form the 12-14 centuries. From stained glass windows of cathedrals to King Arthur and the knights of the round table, the medieval period heavily influenced Gothic romantics and generally all art forms of Europe. Artists longed for the simplicisty of the Medieval time period that was not present in the heaviness of the Classical world. Sir Walter Scott was by far the most successful in deriving simplicity in art. Almost forgotten now, his novels like The Bride of Lammermoor and Ivanhoe nevertheless inspired writers, painters, and composers in Germany, France, Italy, Russia and many other lands.
In this time period, artistic interpretation of religion underwent dramatic development. As time passed, artists were drawn to religious imagery in the similar ways, as they were attracted to Arthurian or other ancient traditions in which they no longer believed. Religion became estheticized and artists felt a need to present the Bible with the same freedom as their predecessors with classical mythology, and with as little reverence. For example, Faust begins and concludes in Heaven with characters of God, the Devil, angles, and demons. The Enlightenment had weakened the hold of Christianity over society to the extent that some at least, like Goethe, no longer felt the need to engage in the sort of fierce battles with it Voltaire had fought, but felt instead free to play with it. A comparable attitude can be seen in much of the work of the English Pre-Raphaelite painters who began in mid-century to treat Christian subjects in the context of charmingly "naive" Medievalism.
Romantic art looks like it sounds. This art is highly imaginative, subjective, emotionally intense, and dreamlike. This new romantic taste favored simplicity and naturalness; thoughts were to flow from the canvas as a blatant trace of thought from untutored common people. Specifically in Germany, the idea of collectivity was a dominant idea in the arts. These scholars admired anonymous masses that expressed themselves from the soul rather than popular individual artists. The fantasy of creative folk reflected the lack of knowledge in regards to the process in which the Nazis of the 1930s created songs and stories; also the idealogy of the essence of a German soul was used to dire effect. 
Rousseau heavily influenced the Romantic Movement. He wrote of themes such as love and refined the idea of sensitivity. Love is the most cherished topic of the Romantics, whether buried under rage or terror, the motives of such emotions all root from the fundamental emotion of love. In the classical world, love was often synonymous with sex, yet the Romantics developed something else from the word. They portrayed lives of realistic young men and women in love rather than the Classical tradition. Love, for the first time, was celebrated as the most genuine human emotion. So thoroughly has love become identified with romance that the two are now generally taken as synonyms, disregarding the earlier associations of "romance" with adventure, terror, and mysticism.
The exotic intrigued Romantics. Just as Romantics responded to the longing of people for a distant past, so they provided images of distant places. The Spanish looked upon the French as exotic while Asian exoticism was introduced to Europeans. These ideas of the exotic originated from stereotypes, but the Romantic age was also a period in which Europeans traveled more than ever to examine at first hand the far-off lands of which they had read. Much of this was a result of European colonialism and the inhabitants were often regarded as innately lazy or unable to govern themselves. Male travelers viewed the native women of foreign lands as more sexually desirable and these women often show up in Romantic works. Lord Byron was the most influential force in popularizing exoticism in literature. Romantic lyric poetry of Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth had a negligible influence outside of their native tongue, the sweep of Byron's longer poems translated well into other languages and other artistic media. 
The mixture of disbelief in and fascination with religion evident in such works illustrates a general principal of intellectual history: artistic and social movements almost never behave like rigid clock pendlums, swinging all the way from one direction to another. A better metaphor for social change is the movement of waves on a beach, in which an early wave is receding while another advances over it, and elements of both become mixed together. For all that many of its features were reactions against the rationalist Enlightenment, Romanticism also incorporated much from the earlier movement, or coexisted with the changes it had brought about. 
Prior to the 1700s, individualistic beliefs were not looked upon seriously. The feudal system meant that people were born into nobility and one was a peasant if their parent was one too. However, as ideas of mercantilism and capitalism emerged, the class system began to wane. New industrialists wanted to credit themselves for their labor and rejected taxes and regulation. Along with individualistic thoughts regarding work, they developed their own tastes in the arts and created new social and artistic movements alien to the old aristocracy. This process can be seen operating as early as the Renaissance in the Netherlands. 
These new concepts of the market also affected painters, composers, and writers who caught fans of their works for money. They no longer had to pay the Church or rich sponsors. They could now afford to pursue their individual tastes in a way not possible even in the Renaissance. 
The most influential exemplar of individualism of the 1800s was Napoleon Bonaparte. His leadership of France in the chaotic wake of a bloody revolution as he led his army to a series of triumphs in Europe to build a brief but influential Empire created new styles, tastes, and even laws with disregard for public opinion that fascinated the people of the time. People loved him and hated him. Yet he was the epitome of individualism. 
The concepts and attitudes of nature today can be traced back to Romanticism. German romantics were inspired by the concept of nature as a manifestation of the divine. This led to symbolic landscaping, first started by Phillipp Otto Runge. Landscapes expressed a mystical feeling and a sense of melancholy solitude and estrangement. Europeans traditionally painted perfect cityscapes with tidy gardens with tastes of ancient Rome and Greece. Rousseau played an important part in changing this as would often go on hikes and experience nature. After the Enlightenment, there was an increase in security and people had more freedom to travel for pleasure. Nature was no longer a mysterious evil as people experienced God through it. Ironically, it is because of the industrial revolution that pushed others to seek refuge in others.
Sources:
Brians, Paul. Homepage. September 21, 2000. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html 
Romantic Chronology. University of California Berkeley. 2001. http://english.ucsb.edu:591/rchrono/default.htm

--------------Society and Life in the Era of Romanticism------------------

Social System
Pre-Victorian English country society as illustrated in the works of Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Maria Edgeworth, and Elizabeth Gaskell is seen as quaint and colorful, cheerful and pleasing-it's home to the British, and the great cities-Bath and London-are merely where the adventures take place. The country is where the heroes and heroines discover themselves, have their epiphanies, and become apotheoses of British literature. 
Pre-Victorian society had a complex social system. A single county is host to a variety of classes. At the top, the duke and duchess preside, followed by the earl and countess, the lord and lady, the squire, the young ladies and old maids, the doctor and his apprentice, the solicitors and barristers, the land agent and the governess, and lastly, the servants. 
Social status was unchangeable for a man, but for a lady, it was much easier and most frequently done. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park contrasts two sisters-one marries beneath her and one marries below her; one lives in squalor and one lives in luxury. A young lady's life was often already prepared for; she was to be a wife in hopes of raising a family. In preparation for marriage, education was minimal and often done at home by a governess or at small private school near the home. A governess lived with the family she was serving, and educated her employer's children until they entered school, college, or "came out." A governess was seen as a member of the family, or a servant, and was supposed to be a behavioral model for the children she taught. Young ladies became governesses when they encountered a lack of opportunity to move up the social status or to marry. Ladies were also expected to learn how to sing, play the piano, dance, draw or paint, and engage in other genteel arts, including embroidery, lace-making, and crochet. At 16-17, a young lady "came out" to society. Before her "coming out" event, she was not encouraged to entertain romantic notions towards men, not allowed to be with a man without a chaperone, and discouraged from walking alone. Once "out," a young lady was only given a short period of time to attract suitors and accept a proposal for marriage before being labeled a "spinster." 
A young lady could accept any marriage proposal she wished, as long as it was first approved by her father. The father would most likely approve a marriage proposal from a duke, earl, lord, count, or squire, and would more contemplate his daughter's match with a doctor, barrister, a land agent, and mostly, a servant. An offer from the nobility was customarily accepted right away. Members of the nobility included the title of duke, marquis, earl, viscount, and baron. They were offered seats in the "House of Lords" in British Parliament, owned thousands of acres of land, and were expected to display their rank through a crown, jewelry, clothing, and other accessories. Income primarily came from renting land to tenant farmers. The eldest son of the family would inherit the title and the estate upon the death of his father. In the meantime, he was given the second-most-important title; technically, he was a commoner, as well as the rest of his brothers and sisters. Children of the aristocracy were given the title of "lord" and "lady" added to their Christian name and surname (Lord George Byron). The wife of a duke was called a "duchess," and the wife of a baron, marquis, or younger son of a duke was called "lady." "Squire" was not an official title, but rather used to refer to a town's foremost landowner who was as prosperous and as high up in social standing as the aristocracy, yet not titled. A squire's family would have been in possession of the land for several generations. A squire would serve as a justice of peace or a landowner, renting his land to tenant farmers. 
Doctors were at the forefront of the medical professions, followed by apothecaries and surgeons. A doctor would have taken a degree at a university, and then turned their role to apprentice to begin learning the trade. A solicitor was an attorney and dealt with wills, deeds, and other legal papers. Barristers helped solicitors, but were of higher social status than solicitors. Barristers would argue cases before the court. Success, unfortunately, came through connections. A land agent managed the estate affairs of a member of the landed aristocracy. He would supervise and collect payments. Ladies and gentlemen maintained their comfortable, civilized living style through servants. There were housemaids, kitchen-maids, nurse-maids, and maids-of-all-work. The greatest of all servants was the lady's servant, or the house steward or valet. A housekeeper supervised the maids and the butler supervised the footmen, pages, watchmen, coachmen, gamekeepers, gardeners, stable-hands, and other outdoor servants. Servants had little hope for ascending up the social ladder, and often had to perform strenuous tasks for long hours. Not until the Reform Bill of 1832 did the government of England become more democratic. 
Fashion
The French Revolution declared a change in dress. The dress of the Ancien Régime-wigs, embroidered coats, brocaded gowns, powdered hair, headdresses-was replaced by English country clothes. English nobles spent their leisure in the country, fox-hunting. Therefore coats were made of plain cloth and not embroidered. Instead of heels with silk stockings, the British wore boots. France believed England was a country of freedom and therefore took an interest in all things English. The French gave the English country coat tails, boots were made in different shapes and sizes, collars rose behind the head, and neckcloths rose to the mouth. By the time of Napoleon, men took to wearing top hats and lowering their neckcloths. Breeches came in style and were often worn with riding boots. Women's paniers, bustles, and corsets were done away with in return for the "empire" waist. Waistlines rose to the breast and the cloth that made dresses was light, and sometimes transparent so that a dress was made to look like a nightgown. Women began to wear slippers rather than heels and carry handbags called "reticules." Another essential accessory came into vogue during 1800-the shawl. Women's hair became less extravagant than before, yet it was often decorated by feathers and plumes and worn with bonnets when outdoors. 
In England, after the Peace of Amiens, women's sleeves looked more romantic and were puffed and slashed. In France, the fashion was different. The hem of the dress became slightly inflated. Men's waistcoats became short and square-cut. The trousers became tight-fitting at the thighs, but not at the legs. Men took to shortening their hair and shaving, and carrying canes as they walked.
By 1822, men began to wear corsets to accentuate the broadness of the shoulders. The top of top hats widened further than the brim, and the shirt collar rose again. Women also took to wearing corsets, as the waist finally resumed its normal position and the sleeves became ridiculously puffed. The hems of skirts were made to look wider by adding frills and ruffles. By this time, the Romantic Movement made its way to the family library. The novels of Sir Walter Scott delighted women readers and therefore expressed a need to look like Scott's heroines. For a short while, Scotch tartan plaid came in style. These styles were maintained until 1830, at which time the skirts broadened and the sleeves puffed out more. 
Other Quirks: Etiquette and Life
Dancing- Ladies must not decline a man's invitation to dance, unless she means not to dance at all for the entire set, or for the entire evening. If there are more young women than young men present at a semi-informal ball, some young women would dance with each other. 
Letters- Letters were the only mode of long-distance communication. Letters were charged to the recipient, rather than the sender, and were charged per sheet of writing. Unrelated couples of the opposite sex who were corresponding to each other were considered engaged. 
Travel and Transportation- Because wealthy men and gentlewomen did pretty much nothing but sit on their behinds all day, they frequently traveled, visiting relatives and friends and staying for as little as 4 weeks to two months. Genteel unmarried women were not allowed to travel alone in public coaches. The coaches the pre-Victorians traveled in were numerous, much like today's busses and convertibles. 
Reading- The pre-Victorian's equivalent of television were novels. Novels were considered distasteful by the general public, but many respectable people read them anyway. 
Card Games- Along with other entertainment (reading, music) groups of adults would engage in numerous card games. 
The Double Standard- Women who were unfaithful to their husbands, or engaged in sexual activity before marriage were considered socially "ruined," while men who were charged with the same sins were not considered so. 
Precedence (who goes first)- Precedence among women was ranked by seniority, unless someone younger was married, for example a younger sister married before an older sister, the younger sister would take precedence first. Precedence is also determined by the social rank of the husband. 
Sources
Laver, James. Costume & Fashion. New York: World of Art, 1995. 
Wives & Daughters: English Society Illustrated. PBS, WGBH, ExxonMobil. April 2001. 
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/wives/society.html>
The Republic of Pemberley. 27 July 2001 <http://www.pemberley.com/index.html>

------------------------The Decline------------------------

By the late 1840s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, Realism replaced Romanticism, its ideas only lingering in the medium of art. In the middle of the 19th century, new literary movements such as the Parnassians, the symbolists in poetry, and the realists and naturalists in prose. The American Civil War led to a rise in Realism in American literature. In Britain, anti-romantic attitudes in English fiction, poetry, and criticism grew due to the growth of the industrialized society, two world wars, and the decay of religion and morality. According to some literary historians, the death of Romanticism in literature and drama was proclaimed when Victor Hugo's play, Les Burgraves, failed in 1843. 
Realism began in France with Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, and soon hit the shores of England with George Eliot's Adam Bede. The focus of literature soon shifted to the struggles of the middle-class and human behavior to display a more realistic view of life. In short, realists tended to avoid overwhelming dramatic issues in favor of detachedly describing fact and reality. The opposing ideas of Romanticism and Realism can be seen in Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, specifically in the two brothers, Roger and Osborne Hamley. The novel is set in the 1830s, during the flourishing of the industrial revolution. Roger, who represents the succession of industry, pursues a scientific career and prospers as a great scientist. His brother Osborne is more inclined to writing poetry, and against his father's wishes, marries for the sake of love. Consequently, he dies of a fatal illness. Gaskell hints that the idealism of Romanticism is only momentary. 
In art, the great landscapes of nature were replaced by scenes of common, everyday life, especially that of the working class. In America, simplicity overthrew elaboration and portraits were painted more honestly. American realist works were collectively identified as the Ashcan school or the Eight. In France, historians argue that Delacroix's death in 1863 and the rebellion against French academic painting in the Salon des Refusés ended Romanticism in visual art. 
In music, Realism and Naturalism were practically nonexistent. The closest music came to Naturalism was through Musorgsky, the verismo operatic movement in late-19th-century Italy, and Symbolistic and Realist elements in Wagner and Verdi. With World War I, Romantic music became more pronounced and evolved to the musical style of Neoclassicism. 
With industrialization, the American Civil War, and unsuccessful revolutions in continental Europe, Romanticism declined and Realism thrived. However, Realism and Naturalism sustained several characteristics of Romanticism, and it is upon this fact that literary scholars identify Victorianism as a later stage of Romanticism. Thus it was not until the Modernist Era and World War I that Romanticism disappeared altogether. 
Sources
"Realism (literature)," Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com (c) 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Longyear, Ray M. Nineteenth-Century Romanticism in Music. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1988. 
Noyes, Russell. English Romantic Poetry and Prose. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. 


Literautre-->
Quills and Inkwells -->

-------------A Renaissance of Writing------------------------
Romanticism in Literature: A Renaissance of Writing
They will not hear me as I sing these songs,
The parted souls to whom I sang the first;
Gone is that first response, in vain one longs
For friendly crowds that have long been dispersed
My grief responds to strangers, unknown throngs
Applaud it, and my anxious heart would burst.
Whoever used to praise my poem's worth,
If they still live, stray scattered through the earth... (Goethe, Faust 69) 
--"Dedication from Faust" Johann von Goethe (1749-1832)

Critics and scholars alike still applaud Goethe for his many novels, poems and plays. Today, he is considered the greatest German writer, and one of the greatest figures in world literature. Little did Goethe know, while writing this dedication, that he and his French counterpart, Jean Jacques Rousseau, would inspire a global, literary movement that would prosper for more than a century. With Götz von Berlichingen in 1773 and The Sorrow of Young Werther in 1774, Goethe opened the doors for the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) movement that would later give rise to German Romanticism. 
But Germany was not alone in the Romantic movement. The French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, preached the importance of the individual, freedom of the human spirit, and the power of emotions. However, the full movement in France was hindered by the revolution and the Napoleanic wars. Romanticism didn't hit England until the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1800 by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The two poets abandoned tradition and convention in poetry to suit the new Romantic philosophy. This revolt against convention and classicism spread across the hemisphere to America. With the Revolutions of 1848, Romanticism swallowed Europe whole. 

Libertarianism, which advocated the rights of the individual, was embraced by American anarchists and also influenced romantic poetry and art. Writers also criticized cities, opposed the Industrial Revolution, and revered nature; as Wordsworth mentions in The Prelude (1850): 

From Nature doth emotion come, and moods
Of calmness equally are Nature's gift...
Of peace and excitation, find in her
His best and purest friend; from her receives
That energy by which he seeks the truth,
From her that happy stillness of the mind
Which fits him to receive it when unsought. (Noyes 298)
The American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were extreme advocates of nature as shown in their respective essays Nature (1836) and Walden (1854). The triumph of nature over man is often seen in Romantic literature, especially in Melville's Moby Dick. On a side note, according to Social Contract, science, which represented logic, was also frowned upon, as demonstrated in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. 
Another topic that fascinated Romantics was that of the supernatural, which was seen most often in American Dark Romanticism and British Gothic Romances. This part of the movement was inspired by the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen, from which the motif of the doppelgänger (double) sprung. Heinrich Heine, E.T.A. Hoffman, Adelbert von Chamisso, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Edgar Allan Poe wrote novels and short stories on the theme. Perhaps the most well-known short story on the double is "The Fall of the House of Usher," by Edgar Allan Poe. Roderick and Madeleine are twins who share a deadly fate. Through them, Poe suggests that the intellectually-oriented mind (Roderick) cannot live without a physically-oriented body (Madeleine). Simply put, Romanticism in literature was a dopplegänger itself; on one side, the Dark Romantics and Gothic writers believed in the inherent evil of man, and on the other side, the Transcendentalists and Romantic poets believed man was naturally good. 
Emotion and intuition, imagination and innocence-these ideas were the cornerstones of the Romantic movement. To ignore feeling in response to logic was a tragic idea, and it fueled the tenets of Romantic literature until Realism sought to evaluate why it was thought this way. In conclusion, the Romantic movement produced individualistic, unconventional, and unrepressed work the world had not experienced before. Needless to say, the Romantic movement was a renaissance that sought to show the world the importance of emotion and nature, the fascinating depths of the supernatural, and the evils of society and industrialism. 
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. 
-From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman (1819-1892) 

Sources: 
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1961. 
"Romanticism (literature)," Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com (c) 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Noyes, Russell. English Romantic Poetry and Prose. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. 
Whitman, Walt. "Song of myself." Everypoet.com. 2000. <http://www.everypoet.com>

----------------------Romantic Writers and Opium----------------------------

Ode on Indolence: Romantic Writers and Opium
The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb'd my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain had no string, and pleasure's wreath no flower:
O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense 
Unhaunted quite of all but-nothingness?
-from "Ode on Indolence," May 1819 by John Keats (1795-1821) 
Extracted from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, during 100 A.D. in Egypt and Asia Minor, opium was first used as a medication by physicians. Later, its uses in medicine spread to ancient Greece, yet it was also considered a mystical agent in ancient mythology and in the epic poems of Homer. Not long after, opium traveled to Rome, where the opium-extracted compound "mithridate" gained long-lasting popularity as a medicine. It disappeared in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, and only reappeared after European travelers returned from the East in the 11th century. By the 17th century, opium was used strictly for medication in Western Europe. The first known English opium-addict writer was Thomas Shadwell, a 17th century playwright. By the end of the 17th century, opium-addiction became more widespread. At this time, the specific effects of opium on the human body and psyche remained a mystery. Several used it as a therapeutic drug to relieve depression, as well as physical pain. In addition, many children's patent medicines contained potent amounts of opium, which were often administered to cure crying and fits. 
According to Hayter's Opium and the Romantic Imagination, it was not until the British writer Thomas De Quincey theorized the effects of opium on the imagination that many other British poets and writers began experimenting with it. De Quincey believed that opium, especially the dreams that resulted from its use, was an important part of the creative process that contributed to his art. It was upon this theory, unveiled to the world in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), that De Quincey advocated the use of opium. However, not everyone accepted it; 19th century American and French physicians disapproved of the recreational use of opium. 
Among the suspected dabblers and addicts of opium-eating were Edgar Allan Poe and John Keats; among the definite, Charles Pierre Baudelaire and obviously, the members of the Club des Haschischins. British poet George Crabbe was never suspected of it, for he never wrote of opium dreams; he only mentioned the drug once, specifically in his poem, The Flowers. After his death, his son revealed Crabbe's opium addiction. Samuel Taylor Coleridge suffered from addiction, yet he believed that there was no association between his dreams and his opium habits until 1814, when he acknowledged that his nightmares came as a result of his drug abuse. He later goes on to say that The Pains of Sleep, written in 1803, was "an exact and most faithful portraiture of the state of my mind under influence of the incipient bodily derangement from my use of Opium, at the time that I yet remained ignorant of the cause" (Hayter 199). Also, It is suspected that "Kubla Khan" was written under the influence of Coleridge's opium dreams. 
Even Lord Byron, Wilkie Collins and Francis Thompson practiced and wrote of their experiences with opium. Among writers who took opium for medicinal purposes, and seldom experienced or wrote of its effects were Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Sir Walter Scott, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, James Thompson, and Gérard de Nerval. Nevertheless, many Romantic writers were fascinated with the output of creativity and imagination that they believed opium could induce. 
Sources: 
"Opium," Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com (c) 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Hayter, Alethea. Opium and the Romantic Generation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968. 
Bremness, Lesley. Herbs. London: Dorling Kindersley, 1994. 

--------------------The Gothic Romance-----------------------
"It was a dark and stormy night..."
"At this moment, the terrible spectacle, which Emily had witnessed in a chamber of that castle, occurred to her, and she shuddered, while she looked upon the nun--and recollected her late words--that 'years of prayer and penitence could not wash out the foulness of murder.' She was now compelled to attribute these to another cause, than that of delirium. With a degree of horror, that almost deprived her of sense, she now believed she looked upon a murderer; all the recollected behaviour of Laurentini seemed to confirm the supposition, yet Emily was still lost in a labyrinth of perplexities, and, not knowing how to ask the questions, which might lead to truth, she could only hint them in broken sentences."
--Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe 
As mentioned earlier, the Romantics took great interest in the supernatural. From their fascination with horror and mystery and their rebellion against the Age of Reason, the Gothic novel took form. Mysteries, ghosts, Gothic castles, violence, vampires, terrors, monstrosities, secret passageways-these were the recurring motifs of Gothic literature. This sub-genre of the Romantic movement was largely inspired by German ghost stories and graveyard poetry, especially that of Romantic-forerunners Thomas Gray and James Thomson. In 1750, Gray wrote "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" and sent it his friend Horace Walpole. 
Then, on a dark and stormy night in 1764, Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto. It was not long before other writers, mystified by his work, began to write Gothic novels of their own. These included Ann Radcliffe, Clara Reeve, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Charles Robert Maturin, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and the American novelist Charles Brockden Brown. Even traditional Romantics could not resist writing a bit of Gothic literature. Jane Austen completed Northanger Abbey in 1799 as a satire on the superfluity of the Gothic writers: "She had reached the age of seventeen without having seen on amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility: without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient... But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero her way (Austen 360)." The Brontë sisters contributed a number of Gothic novels, including Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847). Lord Byron, who was more well known for his poetry, contributed the figure of the Byronic hero, a man doomed and constantly struggling with dark emotions and guilt, in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812) and Manfred (1815). Byron has also been credited (mistakenly) with the creation of the vampire. John Keats, another British Romantic poet, also included some Gothicism in The Eve of St. Agnes. 
Many critics at the time claimed that Gothic literature had no moral or philosophical value. However, Gothic literature is often tainted with symbolism. Danger and destruction come from the house, the family, or from oneself (Norton). In Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Jane discovers that Rochester has locked away his wife Bertha, a murderous madwoman, in the far-away rooms of Thornfield hall. Loud, careless laughs, the fire in Rochester's room, Mason's wound-the only evidence of her existence that Jane encounters is rather puzzling, yet all elements are purely Gothic. Dangers within the family, seen in families plotting against each other, culminate in the modern mystery novel. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a prime example. Madeleine Usher strangles her own brother Roderick to death as the house crumbles and falls. The concept of the dangers seen within oneself stems from the blueprint of the closely-related Byronic, Satanic and Promethean heroes, and is seen in countless Gothic romances.
Along with Romanticism, Gothic literature died with the emergence of Realism. However, it has a lasting legacy in modern literature. The modern mystery and horror novels seen on the shelves of today's bookstores have been inspired by the Gothic novel. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would never have written the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) the same way without some Gothic influence. Nor would Stephen King or Anne Rice write book after book of horror stories, nor Hollywood produce as many horror movies. Therefore, it is evident that remnants of the Gothic literary age still float about and haunt us today. 
Sources: 
Potter, Franz. The Gothic Literature Page. 27 June 2001 <http://members.aol.com/iamudolpho/basic.html>
Voller, Jack G. The Literary Gothic. 25 June 2001
<http://www.litgothic.com/>
"The Gothic Novel," Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com (c) 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Norton Topics Online. W. W. Norton & Company. 27 Nov 2000 <http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/nto/romantic.htm>
Austen, Jane. The Complete Novels of Jane Austen Volume II. New York: The Modern Library, 1992.

------------------Women and Romanticism----------------------

Before Mary Wollstonecraft, women had no particular voice in European literary society. However, in the Age of Reason, many women hosted literary salons. The most famous salon during the Enlightenment was hosted by Louise Florence d'Épinay, who later went on to publish several writings of personal and morally-instructive nature. Germaine de Staël hosted an international salon in Switzerland after fleeing the French Revolution. She produced De la littérature (1800) and Germany (1810), both of which spread the theories of Romanticism. In one particular chapter of De la littérature, Madame de Staël strongly advocated women's literature; however, it was not this that delivered her literary attention. In 1802 before being exiled from Paris, Madame de Staël published her first novel, Delphine, which was condemned by Napoleon. After writing Corinne, ou l'Italie (1807), she was exiled from France a second time. This was her most popular novel, which influenced women's literary pursuits in Europe and America. In 1812, Napoleon confiscated Madame de Staël's De L'Allemagne in an attempt to silence her. This proved that the world of men would not willingly acknowledge women's freedom in literature. 
Women's Gothic fiction got a push in the 1790's, when Ann Radcliffe contributed to the development of the Gothic novel with The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797). At one point in time, she was the most famous novelist in England (Microsoft Encarta). Two other women Gothic novelists are Clara Reeve and Charlotte Smith, who were both key figures in the Gothic Novel genre. However, Radcliffe's thick, impossible plots were something to be made fun of, as was demonstrated in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1818). 
Jane Austen was the next key player in Women's Romantic literature with her publication of Sense and Sensibility in 1811. She was well-known for her witty reflections of British middle and upper-class society. She blended satire, romance, and psychological insight in her writing. Because of her ability to write cleverly and her motif of characters changing for the better, she is now regarded as one of the best novelists of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1813, she published Pride and Prejudice, and in the following year, Mansfield Park. Both works guaranteed her immediate success in the literary world. Before Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth carried out the tradition of pointing out society's failings. Her novel, The Absentee (1812), describes the horrible effects of absentee landlords. Another woman who wrote of social disparities was Scottish writer Susan Ferrier, who helped develop the prose tradition in Scottish literature. 
As proof that women could write better than, if not as well as men, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818 after being challenged to a ghost-story writing contest by Lord Byron and her husband, Percy Shelley. The novel was the first to convey the plot of "creation destroying, or succeeding the creator." Victor Frankenstein, once overjoyed with the thought of giving life, suddenly experiences fear and dread in his creation: "Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid; the overthrow so complete" (Shelley 57)! Consequently, unable to meet the creature's demands, Victor Frankenstein is murdered by the very thing that he gave life. The novel was widely acclaimed both critically and popularly, and gained long-lasting success. More than a century later, it inspired a major motion picture. The novel was followed by Valperga in 1823. In 1826, Shelley wrote The Last Man to describe her grief of her husband's death. The novel was followed by Lodore (1835) and Faulkner (1837). Afterwards, she shut herself away from the literary world and spent her time raising her son and securing his right to the Shelley title before she died in 1851. 
Women's Romantic poetry also received high praise. Major characters of the Romantic movement in poetry include Elizabeth Barret Browning. Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) is considered by critics to be her best work. Joanna Baillie published Poetic Miscellanies in 1823; however she was more well-known as a playwright. Another major figure in Women's Romantic poetry is Emily Dickinson, who is now known as the greatest American female poet. She wrote her poems very carefully and often mentioned the importance of emotion. However, her poems were not known to the world until 1896. 
In 1846, the "Bells," otherwise known as the Brontë sisters, published Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. In the year of 1847, the Brontë sisters saw eminent fame and high praise with Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. However, by the 1850s, women's Romantic literature was succeeded by the Realism and the deaths of many Romantic writers rendered it impossible to revive the movement. With Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford (1853), Realism sounded the knell of Women's Romanticism.
Sources:
Mussell, Kay. Women's Gothic and Romantic Fiction. London: Greenwood Press, 1981. 
"Staël, Germaine de," Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com (c) 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
"Épinay, Louise Florence d'," Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com (c) 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

German Literature -->

---------------Sturm und Drang------------------------

Die deutscher Sturm: The Sturm und Drang movement, a precursor to German Romanticism
By the 18th century, the novel became a popular form of entertainment in Germany. Written for the middle-class audience, the novel was designed to be a psychological narrative of an individual, or a Bildungsroman, and intended for social and moral enrichment. The autobiography was also a popular form of literature, and was written mostly by middle-class males. This allowed for the spread of individualistic ideas, and eventually, the spread of Romanticism across the continent. 
Romanticism in Germany started with the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress, 1770-1784) movement, christened so by the tile of Maximilian Klinger's drama of 1776 (Longyear 29). It began with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's drama written in Shakespearean prose, Götz von Berlichingen (1773) based on the 15th century German knight. Then, with the publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), Goethe defended suicide and expressed a new sense of freedom in emotions: 
To think that I might have enjoyed the happiness of dying for you! of sacrificing myself for you, Lotte! I should die courageously and gladly if I knew I could restore to you the joy and tranquility of your life. But 
ah! it has been given to only a few noble beings to shed thier blood for those they love, and by their death to create a new life a hundred times better for their friends. (Goethe, Werther 133) 
Although the Sturm und Drang movement was purely German, its ideas and themes stemmed from French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who remarked: "The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man." The same longing and melancholy is later seen in full force in The Sorrows of Young Werther, a monumental product of the movement. 
Other figures of the Sturm und Drang movement included Johann Gottfried von Herder, the movement's leader, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the movement's voice. German Enlightenment figure Gotthold Ephriam Lessing, also contributed his skills as a dramatist; he introduced Germany to Shakespeare. Among other precursors, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert's expressive novels and poems fueled inspiration among writers Lessing, Klopstock, Goethe, and composers C.P.E. Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn. 
Sturm und Drang was also spurred by works of Nationalism that extolled the German Romantic spirit, particularly Stimmen der Völker (1778-1779), a collection of folk songs compiled by Herder, and Von deutscher Art und Kunst (Of German Style and Art, 1773) by Herder and Justus Möser. Rebellion against reason, inclinations towards nature, the discomfort of society, the potency and spontaneity of emotions-these characterized the spirit of the movement and the young German writers, including J.M.R. Lentz and Friedrich Müller, who sought to produce the same violently emotional and individualistic work as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther,1774): 
What a thing is Man, this lauded demi-god! Does he not lack the very powers he has most need of? And if he should soar in joy, or sink in sorrow, is he not halted and returned to his cold, dull consciousness at the very moment he was longing to be lost in the vastness of infinity? (Goethe, Werther 105) 
Poetry was also an important medium. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's poems influenced Goethe, the Göttingen poets, and the movement itself. Klopstock was the premier figure of German poetry during the Sturm und Drang movement. Drama was also a leading form of entertainment. The last major figure of the Sturm und Drang movement was Friedrich von Schiller. His plays, especially Die Räuber (The Robbers, 1781) also introduced Romanticism to the world. 
Sources: 
Watanabe-O'Kelly, Helen, ed. The Cambridge History of German Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 
"Sturm und Drang," The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright (c) 2001 Columbia University Press.

---------------------Sattelzeit-----------------------------

Before delving into the details of German Romanticism, we must define further how the movement started. The literature of the time reflected political and religions feelings, as the French Revolution and the War of German Liberation (1812-15) as well as the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire (1806ff.) and traditional German sacred institutions (1803) shook up the religious and political feelings of the German public (Cambridge 203). In addition to the previously-mentioned changes, the political and social reforms carried out by German prime ministers Freiherr vom Stein and Fürst von Hardenberg also contributed to the changing spirit of literature (Cambridge 204). This period of German literature (1790-1830) is often called the Sattelzeit (saddle period), an imbalance of two ideas: conventional and liberal, old and new (Cambridge 204). Thus Goethe displayed a duality in his literature; as a writer, he constantly shifted between Classicism and Romanticism. With the Sturm und Drang movement, German writers revived folk tradition and medievalism. 
Yet, this early period of Romanticism, was a melding of two worlds; through 1795 to 1797, Goethe the realist, and Schiller the idealist, partnered to edit the literary periodical, Die Horen, during Goethe's stay in Weimar at the duke Charles Augustus' court. Die Horen was the epitome of classical humanism in which Schiller succeeded at illustrating the creativity of humanity (Cambridge 226). The same themes are outlined in Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794), in which he states in his second letter:
But the voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science are enlarged. (Modern History Sourcebook, par. 9) 
Such was the tone of the decade of classical humanism. At nearly the same time, in the nearby town of Jena, August Wilhelm and his brother Friedrich von Shlegel first published their journal, Athenaeum (1798-1800) in 1798. Thus began the age of the Fruhromantiker (early Romantics). The journal was founded as a result of Schiller's breaking relations with the von Schlegels. August Wilhelm had previously contributed essays to Die Horen, yet his brother Friedrich, a scholar of classical poetry, did not review Die Horen in a respectful light. Thus the brothers made Goethe a model of their own version of aesthetic romanticism. Goethe was the only common ground between two opposing ideals and this literary period can reasonably be called "the Age of Goethe (Cambridge 226)." Friedrich is also credited with developing the literary term "romantisch (Pegasos, par. 1)." Friedrich von Schlegel's idea of something "Romantic" is something that "depicts emotional matter in an imaginative form (Pegasos, par. 1)." As seen in Athenaeums-Fragment No. 116, his description of Romantic poetry shows how much he opposed Schiller, who tried separating poetry whereas von Schlegel creatively blended it (Cambridge 229).
Die romantische Poesie ist eine progressive Universalpoesie. Ihre Bestimmung ist nicht bloss, alle getrennten Gattungen der Poesie wieder zu vereinigen und die Poesie mit der Philosophie und Rhetorik in Berührung zu setzen. Sie will und soll auch Poesie und Prosa, Genialität und Kritik, Kunstpoesie und Naturpoesie bald mischen, bald verschmelzen, die Poesie lebendig und gesellig und das Leben und die Gesellschaft poetisch machen [...]. Sie allein ist unendlich, wie sie allein frei ist und das als ihr erstes Gesetz anerkennt, dass die Willkür des Dichters kein Gesetz über sich leide." (from Athenäeum-Fragment, 1798) 
Romantic poetry is a progressive, universal poetry. Its regulation is not bare to combine all separate kinds of poetry again and to set the poetry with philosophy and Rhetorik in contact. It wants and is also poetry and prose, Genialitaet and criticism, art poetry and nature poetry soon to mix, soon merge; life and society makes poetry alive and informal [... ]. Poetry alone is infinite, how it is free and alone and recognizes as its first law that the arbitrariness of the poet does not suffer under a law itself. " (from Athenäeum-Fragment, 1798) 
Friedrich von Schlegels's unfinished novel Lucinde (1799) describes love as a product of physical and spiritual elements (Pegasos, par. 3). His idea of "Romantic Irony" was developed on the thought that experience changed one's perception of truth and that wisdom came from the recognition of that perceptual change (Columbia, "Schlegel, Friedrich von"). 
Novalis, the Frau Schlegels Caroline and Dorothea, and the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher also contributed to Athenaeum. Fruhromantiker who resided outside of Jena included the philosopher J.G. Fichte, and the poets Ludwig Tieck and Whilelm Heinrich Wackenroder. During this time, at the end of the 18th century, a new literary form appeared; the novellle, a prose tale dealing with supernatural elements, reinforced the Fruhromantiker inclinations towards that of the metaphysical and the mystical (Grolier, Romanticism par. 6). Wackenroder had his own view of art, which he demonstrated in Heart of an Art-Loving Monk (1797): 
But I know of two miraculous languages through which the Creator has enabled men to grasp and understand heavenly things in all their power, or at least so much of them - to put it more modestly - as mortals can grasp. They enter into us by ways other than words, they move us suddenly, miraculously, seizing our entire self, penetrating into our very nerve and drop of blood. One of these miraculous languages is spoken only by God, the other is spoken by a few chosen men whom he has lovingly annointed. They are: Nature and Art..... Art is a language unlike that of Nature; but Art, too, has a marvelous power over the human heart and exercises it by equally hidden means. It speaks through the image of men, which is to say that it uses hieroglyphic signs which are familiar and comprehensible to us by their appearance. But it endows these visible forms with something spiritual and supersensual in a way so affecting, so admirable that it can stir us to the roots of our being.....The teachings of learned men exercise our brain, only half of our self. But the two miraculous languages whose power I proclaim touch our feelings as well as our mind; they seem to fuse - I cannot find other words to express it - all parts of our unconscious being into a new, single organ which receives and comprehends in this twofold way the miracles of Heaven.... (FA 257 Modern Art, German Romanticism-Selected Quotes, par. 2)
The next circle of Romantics, the Hochromantiker (high romantics), spanned 1802 to 1815. Unlike the previous generation of Romantics, who settled in Jena, this generation was centered in Heidelberg. The Hochromantiker included Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, and poets Heinrich Heine, Eduard Mörike, E.T.A. Hoffman, Joseph von Eichendorff, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Ludwig Uhland. These writers carried out the Romantic tradition in a more practical yet creative manner (Grolier, Romanticism, par. 7). 
By the 1830s, the revolutionary literary movement, Junges Deutschland (Young Germany) overtook Romanticism as the Congress of Vienna in 1815 made Germany a confederation of states, and industry and capitalism replaced agrarian society and feudalism. During this time of social upheaval, the emergence of naturalism and realism easily displaced Romanticism. However, Heinrich Heine survived to be the voice of this generation and Eduard Mörike maintained a form of classicism. 

Sources: 
"German Literature," Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com (c) 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Ruoff, Gene W. "Romanticism." 1998 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. 1998. Grolier Interactive Inc. Boston: Grolier, 1997.
"German literature," The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright (c) 2001 Columbia University Press.
Schiller, J. C. Friedrich von. "Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man." 1759-1805. Internet History Sourcebooks Project. Ed. Paul Halsall. Sept. 2000 < http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/schiller-education.html>

Watanabe-O'Kelly, Helen, ed. The Cambridge History of German Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 
Pegasos- Literature Related Resources. Kuusankosken Kaupunginkirjasto, Finland. 1999 < http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/schlegel.htm>
FA 257 Modern Art: 19th Century. Boston College. 2001. < http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa257/>


British Literature -->

------------From the Lake District to Lake Geneva--------------------
The supreme majesty of the alluring green hills and tranquil lakes of north-western England's Lake District invited the Lake poets, the first generation of British Romantic poets, to wander its meadows and meditate at its falls. This was where the heart of the sublime lay. It was thus an ideal setting for the beginnings of British Romanticism. It's patrons were none other than William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey. Amidst the French and Industrial Revolutions, two poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, along with Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, met with each other and collaborated on Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth's love for nature and Coleridge's talent for words made Lyrical Ballads a singular poetic work of great industry; it single-handedly introduced the spirit of Romanticism to Britain. The preface to Lyrical Ballads indeed heralded the end of an age and the beginning of a new one: 
It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind. The evidence of this fact is to be sought, not in the writings of Critics, but in those of Poets themselves. 
The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and aukwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to enquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title (Noyes 357). 
The idea of reading for pleasure rather than for one's own moral instruction was not entirely new. The Gothic novel had come decades before Lyrical Ballads (1798). However, the idea that poetry should express emotion, imagination, and nature was particularly unheard of. Wordsworth's "The Tables Turned" prescribes the notion of abandoning one's pursuit of knowledge for one's pursuit of nature.
The Lake Poets brought the Romantic style to poetry. A new freedom of expression was introduced, bringing forth emotional and sensory imagery, and innovations in form and rhythm made poetry more musical and rich. Many themes included the "vanity of human wishes, the instability of beauty, and the inevitability of death" (Noyes xxxiii). Keats' Ode on Melancholy wraps up all of these themes:
She dwells with Beauty-Beauty that must die; 
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure night,
Turning to Poison while the bee-mouth sips... (Noyes 1194)
Much of the tone of Romanticism involved brooding, melancholy, frustration, suffering, and despair. This spanned from the poems of Coleridge to the Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe. Death and despair went hand in hand in much of the poetry of the second generation of Romanticism. 
The second generation of Romanticism was led by Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Shelley's ill and short-lived friend, John Keats. Their poetry was more impassioned than the previous generation's. There was more of an inclination towards the exotic and supernatural, which became part of reality to them. This led to the direct creation of the science fiction novel, the modern horror novel and the Byronic hero. These poets were also influenced by Hellenism, and the Romantics revived it in their poetry. Shelley and Keats constantly alluded to elements of Greek mythology, and a clear example is seen in Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn (1820). 
In the Summer of 1816, Mary (Shelley) had left her father's house in England to run off with Percy Shelley. With her step-sister Claire Clairmont, they reached the shores of Lake Geneva, where in the Villa Diodoti they joined Lord Byron and John Polidori (Byron's physician). On one stormy night, June 16th, Percy and Mary couldn't return to their own lodgings and had therefore to stay in Villa Diodoti with Byron and Polidori. Together they read aloud German ghost stories from Fantasmagoriana. In one such story, a group of travelers related their encounters with supernatural beings. This inspired Lord Byron to challenge his guests to a ghost-story writing contest. The results were Polidori's Vampyre, the first modern vampire story, a story fragment by Byron, an insignificant story by Percy, and Frankenstein, by Mary. 
The status of prose during the Romantic age was fed by the work of Jane Austen. Sir Walter Scott and Edward Bulwer-Lytton redefined the historical novel. Maria Edgeworth's amusing novels of Irish peasantry and Thomas Love Peacock's satires of Shelley's circle also typified the Romantic Age. Among non-fictional works, the essays of William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, and Thomas de Quincey served to enlighten and berate the English public. 

French Literature -->

-----------French Romanticism------------------

Early traces of French Romanticism could be found at the beginning of the century by Francois-René de Chateubriand, who emphasized the Catholic religion in "Le Génie du Christianisme" (The genius of Christian religion, 1802), and created a melancholic romantic hero in "René" (1805). However the official beginning of Romanticism in France is dated in 1813, when Madame de Staël published "De L'Allemagne" (about Germany). There were strong resistances against the new styles of poetry: France, the country of Enlightenment, defended its identity in opposition to Germany's Romantic ideas, and thus French romanticism was a late-comer. Its role was ultimately defined only when Victor Hugo wrote the preface to a historical novel "Cromwell" (1827). Hugo recognized and stated the love of man for history, contrasts, contradictions, for melting the comic and the tragic, and for the grotesque. Shakespeare was a great influence. Another tendency developed by Hugo and topic of Romanticism is the one for the exotic, incredibly affirmed in the paintings of Delacroix and in Hugo's work titled "Les Orientales"(1829). 
The climax tension between French Romanticists and Classicists occurred in the genre of dramatic arts. What we primarily see in the theatre today is the prevalence of tragi-comedies (called drame by the French). It terminated the
stock characters of the old and replaced it with a variety of new personages on the stage. It even encouraged disjointed action, which was positively denied by the canons of the French and Greek theatre. After Victor Hugo's fights for greater freedom, Alexandre Dumas came forward with a still more melodramatic style of the drame; the best known of these included Henry III and Antony, in which new colflicts were presented, especially regarding morality. A variety of comedic techniques and proverbs were introduced into French drama where dialogue became more important than action. Here the poet Alfred de Musset specially distinguished himself. The titles of his pieces are self-explanatory, as "Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée" (A door must be open or shut) or "On ne badine pas avec L'amour" (There's no trifling with love).
The main figure of the romantic school of literature was Rousseau. French romantics consciously rejected cut-and-dried rationalism of hitherto classic literature, and invoked the cult of feeling for a return to natural life. This nature included the "exotic" tendency mentioned before, clearly defined through the outer world of mountains and rivers, developed by the intellectual descendants of Rousseau such as Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (author of "Paul and Virginia"). 
Hugo's "Notre Dame" is the epitome of French Romantic fiction. Hugo tries to reconstruct a late Middle-Age Paris, Filled with strange characters, each one showing more individuality and more vigor than the anaemic kings and heroes of a late neo-classic tragedy. The novel seems to be a collection of curiosities more than a collection of human beings. Hugo's novel influenced romantics to mind less the portrayal of character than their incidents, and in particular their emotionalism and the vague humanitarianism which will be in the spirit of democracy as we know it. 
Although Balzac had an incredibly different writing style than Hugo's; he wanted to portray human nature just like Hugo. Balzac included morbid eccentric heroes in his stories, aimed at the careful study of men and women of his century. If the exuberance of Dumas is looked over along with the vagaries of "lower romanticism", French romantics were actually trying to portray human nature, exactly as the classicists before them. Yet their vision of life was different. The heroes of romanticism in general are motley herd of eccentrics, and this in France was extremely true. Romantics in France were sometimes designated as the "flamboyant", referring to the gay and picturesque dressing affected by some of their adherents, as well as their literary style. Instead the conservative Classicists were called "grisâtre", or graybeard, which denoted the monotonous color of their poetry.
Sources:
Il romanticismo francese: Da Prévost a Sartre, Italo Siciliano, Sansoni Editore, Firenze 1964
LA scrittura e L'interpretazione VOLUME 2: Dal barocco al romanticismo, G.B. Palumbo Editore, Romano Luperini, Pietro Cataldi, Lidia Marchiani, Franco Marchese, Firenze 1997

--------------The Devil and Romanticism----------------------

During the era of Romanticism the figure of the Devil got a new meaning and an incredible importance. This was strongly true in France: the Devil was seen as an attractive symbol by romantics, allowing them to express their problems, their hidden tendencies and their ambitions. The romantic concepts of Satan is presented in three main topics: 
The Beauty of the Devil 
"Le Diable Amoreux", by Jacques Cazotte, told the story of Alvaro, a young boy that in Naples befriends a man claiming the ability to summon spirits and control them to do what he desired. The man leads Alvaro to a cave near Portici, and shows him how to invoke the Devil. After a lengthy ritual, a camel head appears and asks <<Che vuoi?>> (What do you want ? Italian). As a joke, Alvaro asks the camel head, which is a manifestation of the devil, for a piece of candy. But instead, Alvaro receives a servant girl that will eventually reveal herself as the Devil. In the meantime, she seduces Alvaro, and Alvaro doesn't realize that she is the Devil before it is too late. Cazotte is trying to portray the devil in a completely new and different way, contrary to medieval tradition. No more monstrous aspect and horns, Cazotte's Satan is a young, fascinating lady that Alvaro is compelled to love. Alfred de Vigny in Eloa also shows the appeal of evil: 
Je suis celui qu'on aime et qu'on ne connait pas.
Sur l'homme j'ai fondè mon empire de flamme 
Dans les désirs du coeur, dans les reves de l'ame, 
Dans les liens du corps, attraits mysterieux, 
Dans les trésors du sanf, dans les regards des yeux 
I am the one who loves himself but doesn't know himself
I founded my empire of fire on mankind
In the wishes of the hearts, in the dreams of the soul,
In the minds of bodies, mysterious forces,
In the treasures of blood, in the secrets of eyes

But the greatest emphasis of the beauty and the attraction of the devil comes from Baudelaire; he affirms that the essence of beauty and the appeal of devil lies in the power and sadness and danger: "J'ai trouvè la définition du Beau - de mon Beau.". 
The Poetry of Evil 
The thing that made the devil a most important character of Romanticism was the tendency that developed in that period to celebrate the "not to be", the impossible, the absurd. This has been evident since Lord Byron revealed the new role of the devil: in "Cain", Lucifer teaches mankind to rebel against a tyranny that blocks happiness, just as he himself rebelled against God. Alfred de Vigny remarked upon the ideas of Byron in a great poem that had a blasphemous title: "Satan". The spirit of the Romantic authors was rebellious and therefore they identified themselves, even though they did not write about it directly, with the desperation of an incarnate soul, bound to a body. We find these feelings in Chute d'un Ange by Lamartine, in Nerval's sonnets, especially in Story of the Queen of Morning. In "La fin de Satan" by V. Hugo, the rebellion of Satan is the starting point of liberation of humanity from slavery. However Baudelaire shows the concept in the more suggestive way: O toi, le plus savant et le plus beu des Anges, Dieu trahi par le sort et privé de louanges, O Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misére! [...] Gloire et louange à toi, Satan, dans les hauteurs Du Ciel, où tu régnas, et dans les profondeurs De l'Enfer, où, vaincu, tu reves en silence! Fais que mon ame, un jour, sous l'Arbre de Science, Près de toi se repose, à l'heure où sur ton front Comme un Temple nouveau ses rameaux s'épandront! (Litanies de Satan) 
Ultimately, evil characters like the Devil are rarely presented as models, yet they give off a sort of infernal poetry, created by their solitude, their power, and their courage to rebelling against God. Baudelaire retained that the task of a modern poet was to paint the actions that the devil forces us to do. 
The End of the Devil 
The idea of the end of Satan is linked to the previous theme and was written by many Romantics in two ways-one demonstrating that Satan was not as evil as the general populace thoughtand that he actually was the defender of the man, the other showing that the Devil eventually would regret his past life and sins and would eventually be forgiven by God. The first method was already implied in the figure created by Lord Byron: rebellion is legitimate, it is not evil, it is good. Byron's Satan is more justified than God. In "Consuelo" by George Sand, Satan appears as a wonderful creature, no more in a deceiving aspect (as in Cazotte): he shows his true beauty. Victor Hugo merges the two ideas in "La fin de Satan" a story that summarizes the concepts related to the evil that was already present in his previous works: the guilt of evil as a result of a misunderstanding and a cruelty suffered, and the opportunity of redemption, that through the Devil opens the door to reconciliation with God. "La fin de Satan" represents the culmination point of the myth of Satan in the 19th century. Satan was seen by Romantics as the figure of rebellion (Romanticism) against the imposing rules of an immutable society (Classicism), showing and seeking nevertheless a reconciliation between the two respective, contradictory models.

American Literature -->

----------American Romanticism--------------

The mid 1800s was an age of maturity for young literary America. Individuals freed their minds into a rebirth of fresh ideas and concepts. Writers experimented with the definition of being American, and with a clean slate to write on, imaginations went wild. American writers also made sure it was different from the British literary style. Although it is termed American Romanticism, an American Romantic Renaissance of writing, it originated in Germany in the first wave of the 18th century as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Jean Jacques Rousseau was a key figure in the erection of the Romantic era and also for Social Contract, the idea that progress in science was detrimental to humanity and that it corrupts mankind. Rousseau and his followers reacted to the Age of Reason and Neoclassical thinkers. This new idea of thought reached American in the 19th century and was termed the American Renaissance.
British Romanticism greatly affected American writers, despite their attempts of being unorthodox. From the resonance of Wordsworth's poetic enlightenment with nature, the irony and romantic notions of Byron, the rich imagery of Keats, the transcendental lyricism of Shelley, and the Brontë sisters. The seed of Romanticism was planted in the wildness of American forests, the hearts of Puritans, the fiery rhetoric of freedom and quality; this romantic seed grew into something of its own mind, something new. In the mid nineteenth-century, writers exploded with talent and eloquence. From Emerson's Representative Men, to Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's experience at Walden Pond, and Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The time was ripe indeed, an outburst of a revolution.
The time was ripe for the rise of Romanticism in America. The 18th century had left a heritage of optimism about a man's possibilities and perfectibility. There was a political battle for greater equality for women and slaves. Economically, the country was also on a high and affluence was spreading. Religion was also ready for Romanticism. The dogmas of Calvinism were melting into a more rationalistic Unitarianism and Deism. Thus, society itself was ready to accept new concepts.
Romantics believed in the innate goodness of man and favored the individual over the group. Since they were disliked the modernization of life, Romantics also enjoyed nature. There was a philosophical idealism that was a goal to perfect man in society as a whole. They were free thinking individuals with religious mysticism; some American romantics even rebelled against political authority. The "Five I's" of romanticism were Imagination, Intuition, Innocence, Inner Experience, and Inspiration from nature and the supernatural. There were two subdivisions of Romanticism, gothic romanticism rotted in French, German, and English literature that was attracted to exotic trappings of the Gothics. They contemplated the natural world in lyrical poems, focusing on the commonplace. The romantics were revolting against classics and formalists. Romantics despised traditional literary forms and cherished whimsical works with raw emotion. Good literature came from the heart and it was not meant to be caged by rules.
Certain qualities separated American Romantics from others. One aspect was their love for the natural world. Nature was an oversoul that one could find the heart of God in. The idea of manifest destiny was also very strong and the boundless wilderness was waning. Romantics turned to the artistic, metaphysical, and intellectual frontiers to recapture the ecstasy of exploration and discovery. Another quality worth mentioning is the act of being whimsical. Some American Romantics were activists for abolitionism or they promoted Jacksonian democracy. There was the creation of a Romantic Hero. Qualities of the Romantic Hero included his value of emotion rather than rational thought, he often lived excluded from society, and became one with the natural world. They were youthful, innocent, intuitive, close to nature, and hoplessly uneasy with women who represented civilization. Such a character is still present in today's society from Superman to Indiana Jones. Indeed, these writers searched for a distinctive American voice. 
The main players in the American Renaissance included Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman. These individuals formed a close net and heavily influenced each other. Emerson was the most influential of the writers. His writing was also often incredibly difficult to read. He focused on the American psyche. People like Thoreau often idolized him. His works were popular among the writers.
In summation, American Romanticism occurred after a century of the British wave and it had similarities and differences with other Romantic ideas in Europe. 
Sources: 
Woodlief, Anne. "American Romanticism (or the American Renaissance." Homepage. January 8, 2001. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng372/intro.htm
American Litarary Romanticism. North Georgia Colle and State University. 1997. http://www.gc.peachnet.edu/www/bstrickl/lit/amlit.htm


----------Transcendentalism-----------------

Transcendentalism, the idea, has numerous definitions. American Transcendentalism was first a reform movement in the Unitarian church. Emerson, the "founding father" of the movement, declared that he wanted no followers as his doctrines stressed independent thought. Transcendentalists felt that individualism stemmed from listening to one's "inner voice," and that life is guided by intuition. Intuition allowed people to disregard authority and rely on direct experience. Transcendentalists believed in the Oversoul, in which each individual shares a soul with everything else in the world. Transcendentalism centered on the divinity of each individual; but this divinity could be self-discovered only if the person had the independence of mind to do so. American thought lent itself to this concept of independence. If one can judge by the voter participation in presidential elections (at least 70% of those registered to vote did so, throughout Emerson's lifetime and up to the turn of the century), Americans certainly thought their individual voices were of value. Emerson, and others, believed in what he called the Oversoul. (Walt Whitman called it the "float").There is an inner "spark" contained by and connecting all facets of nature, including humankind, which can be discovered not through logical reasoning but only through intuition, the creative insight and interpretation of one's own inner voices. 
Transcendentalists called for an independence from organized religion; they saw no need for any intercession between God and man. Divinity is self-contained, internalized in every being. Transcendentalism gives credence to the unlimited potential of human ability to connect with both the natural and spiritual world. The chief aim is to become fully aware not only of what our senses record, but also to recognize the ability of our inner voice-our intuition-to wisely and correctly interpret the sensory input. Transcendentalists were idealistic and optimistic because they believed they could find answers to whatever they were seeking. All they had to do was learn to read, through their intuition, the external symbols of nature and translate them into spiritual facts. A transcendentalist declared there was meaning in everything and that meaning was good, all connected by and parts of a divine plan. Emerson refuted evil by insisting it was not an entity in itself but rather simply the absence of good. If good was allowed, evil dissipated. One ray of light can penetrate darkness. According to the transcendentalists, everyone had the power to "transcend" the seeming confusion and chaos of the world and understand nature's signs. Everything on earth has the divine "spark" within and thus is all part of a whole. This philosophy led to an optimistic emphasis on individualism. One aspect of individualism is the value of the individual over society. To "transcend" society one must first be able to look past and beyond it. One must follow his instincts and not conform to what society dictates. Although society will influence an individual towards conformity, it is important to remain true to one's self and to one's identity. Secondly, individualism includes being self-reliant. In his essay, "Self-Reliance", Emerson urges the reader to "trust thyself." 
Sources:
Woodlief, Anne. "American Romanticism (or the American Renaissance." Homepage. January 8, 2001. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng372/intro.htm
American Litarary Romanticism. North Georgia Colle and State University. 1997. http://www.gc.peachnet.edu/www/bstrickl/lit/amlit.htm


----------Dark Romanticism------------------

Dark Romanticism: The Ultimate Contradiction
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this and nothing more." 
From "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
The grotesque, the gloomy, the morbid, the fantastic-the American Dark Romantics embraced all of these illogical elements and shaped them into perhaps the most popular sub-genre of American literature. While the Romantics believed reality to be pale and empty, the Dark Romantics thought quite the opposite. Life to the Dark Romantics was colorful, capricious, and contradictory. Unlike the Romantics, the Dark Romantics acknowledged the evil of man and the horror of evil. Ralph Waldo Emerson had ignored the depravity of man, sin and Calvinist predestination, and the Dark Romantics stood to remind the world of the existence of evil. Like the Romantics and Transcendentalists, however, the Dark Romantics valued intuition and emotion over logic and reason and saw symbols, spiritual truths, and signs in nature and everyday events.
The key figures of Dark Romanticism included Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Edgar Allan Poe, the master of the psychological thriller and an American pop-culture icon, wrote such popular works as "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Cask of Amontillado." His mystery stories, "The Purloined Letter" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" paved the way for the modern detective story, and inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes and Fyodor Dostoevsky to examine the criminal mind in Crime and Punishment (1866). 

Although Herman Melville was not a popular Dark Romantic, he contributed to Romanticism and the development of the Romantic hero with Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847). Similar works brought him fame and prosperity. However, the publication of Moby Dick in 1851 left many of his readers confused. The tale of the white whale is Melville's greatest work, in which audiences at the time failed to grasp it's complexity and symbolism. Now considered a modern classic, Moby Dick is enjoyed as one of the greatest American novels written. Moby Dick is a tale of good vs. evil, and man vs. nature. As evil prevails in the story, the novel is considered a Dark Romantic work. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote such popular fiction as The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of Seven Gables (1851). The Scarlet Letter was a purely Romantic work with elements of Gothic romance. Its gloomy tone, color imagery, supernatural allusions, use of symbols in nature and in civilization, and nonconformist themes certainly made The Scarlet Letter an important contribution to Dark Romanticism. Two of Hawthorne's short stories-"Young Goodman Brown" and "The Minister's Black Veil"-are both consistent with the Dark Romantic tradition. In both tales, Hawthorne digs deep into the human mind and examines sin and evil. 

Italian Literature -->

Someone once said tht "Italian Romanticism doesn't exist". The truth is that Italian Romantics faced the characteristics of Romanticism in a very personal way, mostly because of their moral link with the Renaissance. The Romantic spirit has always been characterized and spread in two different modalities: the existential-ontologic modality, extremely symbolic, and the historical-realistic one, which prefers the novel and the history text. 

In Italy the second modality was predominant so much that Romanticism and Realism coincided. This doesn't mean that they didn't acknowledge the division values-reality on which Romanticism was based: however the division is often solved bringing the "ideal" into the "real," and then discussing the things in a real context. The landmark of Italian romanticism was Milan, and the Romantic themes discussed by Italian artists include the beauty of the Middle Ages, the return of Christian religion, and the interest concerning people and history. And everything was dealt with bearing in mind the anti-classicist polemic and straying as far as possible from the Enlightenment, except from its rationalistic principles that made them deny irrationalism and mysticism. The figures of Italian Romanticism had a big influence on the whole of Europe: Italy was presented as the country of Dante (writer of la Commedia), one of the key authors of the Romantic canon. Alessandro Manzoni immediately joined the romantic faction of the "Lettera al Marchese Cesare D'Azeglio sul Romanticismo" (1823) [A letter written in support of romantic movement] in which he expressed his position against the Classicists. In fact in Italy a war broke out between "classics" and "romantics", which was started by an article by Madame de Stäel titled "Sulla maniera e utilità delle traduzioni" (On the methods and usefulness of translation), that wanted to induce Italian literature to adapt to the new European tendencies. Soon a new polemic about the contrast between the "eternity of beauty" and the "historical nature of the beauty." Among the Classicists the most important voices were Pietro Giordani and Giacomo Leopardi, who were strongly anchored to Italian traditions. Among the Romantics we find Manzoni, Breme and Borsieri, instead. Romanticism brought significant changes in Italy. The Romantic ideas adfirmed that the character of a text was not dependent on the form, but on the spirit that breatheed through it. In Italy the most important change was the triumph of novel as predominant genre: it replaced the epic poem and the tragedy. the new models that substituted Virgilio, Orazio, Petrarca were Dante, Shakespeare, Omero. 
Sources:
LA scrittura e L'interpretazione: Dal barocco al romanticismo, G.B. Palumbo Editore, Romano Luperini, Pietro Cataldi, Lidia Marchiani, Franco Marchese, Firenze 1997

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Music -->

-------------The Dawn of Romanticism---------------------------

During the Classical period in music, two distinct types of sounds were predominant-style galant (French "courtly style") and empfindsamer Stil (German "sensitive style). The two styles were respectively characterized by Bach's two sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Phillip Emanuel. C.P.E. Bach believed that music should "touch the heart:" consequently, elements of his Sinfonia in E minor (1756) were found in many the Sturm und Drang movement's symphonies, which were characterized as a "tense, terse, excited musical style, incorporating surprises in dynamic changes and modulations and an extensive use of the minor mode (Longyear 29)." C.P.E. Bach also inspired Haydn and Mozart. The first hints of Romanticism in music came with Haydn's symphonies and string quartets. Mozart was also guilty of Sturm und Drang compositions, although he often shifted between style galant and his own "tragic, personal" style (Longyear 30). 
Then, in 1792, Beethoven came to Vienna. Studying under Haydn for 2 years and under the influence of Mozart and Muzio Clementi, Beethoven nevertheless developed his own unique, turbulent, convention-defying style. His legacy and contributions to the music world are momentous; his music dominated the first three decades of the 19th century. However, while other composers were intimidated by his genius, many experimented and developed their own means of musical expression.
One such composer, Jan Ladislas Dussek, showed the disintegration of the High Classic Period; Romantic melodies and harmonic patterns contrasted that of Classical. Dussek's Op. 44 in 1800 utilized a more Romantic style. Elements of his style in his F# minor sonata in "Elégie harmonique" Op. 61 resonate in Chopin's and Liszt's work. Johann Nepomuk Hummel's piano concertos were a model for the soloist-dominated nineteenth-century concertos. Hummel's F# minor sonata (1819), especially its unique and new expression of tonality and structure, influenced Schumman and Chopin; in all respects, Hummel can be considered a "Classic Romanticist (Longyear 60-61)." Louis (Ludwig) Spohr idolized Mozart, yet his works retain a significant amount of popularity. His 8th Concerto in A minor is still played today. In addition, he wrote the opera Faust in 1816. His influence on Romantic composers is not to be denied; his concertos strongly inspired Mendelssohn and Chopin. Carl Maria von Weber is known as the first "Romantic" composer. His piano works were the first to be successfully transcribed for the orchestra. His brilliant operas and piano compositions and individualistic style places him with Mozart and Schubert. His piano style influenced Chopin and Mendelssohn; his operas, Berlioz and Wagner. Franz Schubert's Eighth Symphony (D. 759), written in 1822, sounded a new style of symphonic composition. His theme was adventurous, folk-like, innovative; his harmonies' aspects of color harmony and modulation were also part of his brilliancy. Thus he is very difficult to define as a composer (Longyear 70-82). 
The deaths of Weber (1826), Beethoven (1827), and Schubert (1828), allowed many young composers to rise to fame. Thus, in 1830, the Romantic Generation began. Led by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz, Liszt, and Brahms, Romanticism in music continued into the 20th century. In the Romantic age, art became more appreciated for its aesthetic value, science was held in question with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, and nationalism drove the rise of revolutions throughout Europe. With these conditions, Romantic music and Romanticism in general flourished. A greater interest and appreciation in nature and the supernatural led to the production of many unique compositions. Music became more narrative, as demonstrated by the symphonic poem, and more emotional in nature. The status of the musician changed. No longer under the employment of royalty, the musician became dependent on the patronage and support of the public or an individual; although the musician experienced greater freedom, the instability of a musical career was nonetheless daunting. It was also at this point in time that women were given the opportunity to perform, as long as it was not destructive to her traditional role in the family. Musical conservatories popped up as educational institutions in the place of the church and the court. Ultimately, significant changes in the Romantic Age were not lacking. 
Source:
Longyear, Ray M. Nineteenth-Century Romanticism in Music. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1988. 

------------------The Romantic Sound-----------------------------------

Although there is no true division between Classic and Romantic styles in music, Romantic composers sought to highlight the individuality within their music and to differ in the elements of musical style-melody and periodicity, rhythm and expression, harmony and chords, tonality and color, counterpoint and structure. 
While Classic melodies were balanced, clipped, and changes resolved in "stepwise motion," Romantic melodies were longer and more emotional and dramatic; the theme of Mozart's String Quartet in C major is 9 measures long; Schumann's, 32. For expressive purposes, Romantic composers included wide leaps of sixths, sevenths, and other diminished and augmented intervals, as well as a wider melodic range involving a greater number of octaves. In expression, late Romantic composers used ranges as extreme as ppppp to ffff.
In the Romantic period, composers freely broke away from traditional Classic rhythm and three types of cross-rhythms were used. The first, and most common was duplets against triplets, or two beats in one part against three beats in another part. The second type was composed of irregularly-grouped notes in the right hand set to steadily-grouped notes in the left. The third and most complex type of cross-rhythm was an intersection of two or more rhythmic planes. Another type of rhythmic device involved including an occasional measure of a rhythm different than the dominant rhythm of the song, syncopations, and musical accents in the most unexpected places. Meter also became more complex and rhythm was shaped to accompany different dances, particularly waltzes and ballets and national and exotic dances in piano.
In harmony, innovation came with the use of chords. Chromatically altered triads, often with the raised fifth (or the augmented triad) and chromatic or enharmonic alteration of a chord containing a minor seventh were used by Romantic composers as coloristic devices. Delaying the resolution of non-harmonic tones increased the effect of "yearning and longing (Longyear 295)." Higher discords, which were the result of building chords upwards by thirds, was another innovation. Dissonance in harmony was also common. Chord progressions were used increasingly in part-writing; their resolutions were often delayed, or non-existent. Harmonic rhythm was not controlled and was lacking as a structural device. 
In Tonality, the tonal frame of reference expanded by way of extending introductions in a key differing from the dominant one, implying the definition of a key and contrasting movements through unrelated keys, and using tonal parentheses and non-functional harmonies. Keys were used with less limits. The F# minor key was the most common, particularly in piano music. The minor mode was also extremely popular among Romantic composers. A prevalent technique in early Romantic composition included the shifting of harmonies between minor and major and major and minor. 
Counterpoint, where a melody is accompanied to other melodies to form a whole, became an important part of Romantic music. Specifically, linear counterpoint developed through the dissonance resulting from the consolidation of chromatic contrapuntal lines. In addition, the Romantic sound evolved in its use of tone color and structure. Romantic color was broadened through the clarinet, English and French horns, bass clarinet, the harp, the improved piano, and the expanded orchestra. The extensive use of the pedal on the piano to sustain notes began in the 1820s, and became a prime characteristic of Romantic piano music. 
Significant changes in form defined Romantic music. In Symphonies, slow introductions in the first movements were common; slow movements were achieved with hymns, arias, romanzas; final movements ended in triumph. The symphonic poem was created as a sort of narrative orchestral work. The Romantic sonata varied in theme and mode, yet it was nevertheless extended. Miniature works for the piano, such as the nocturne and the etude came into form. In concertos, cadenzas were written out, finales inspired by national dances or folk songs; concertos expanded to four movements, were paired with a scherzo-like movement or written as a single movement. Vocal music evolved in the opera and the solo song. Innovations in form were the German Lied, the French Mélodie, and the French Romance. The Lied was an art-song in which piano and singer were one. In the Romance, the piano only supported the voice's melody. Later, the piano's role became more reinforced in the Mélodie. 
Differing from Classicism in balance and intensity, Romanticism was an unpredictable medium. It is evident that the greatest composers thrived in the Romantic Age and produced the most artistic and unique work through their novel use of color, tonality, counterpoint, structure, melody, rhythm, and harmony. It is with an extraordinary amount of innovation that the evolution of music has come as far-reaching as it has to the present day, thus "[A Romantic work is] that kind of composition in which the artist freely gives himself up to the dominion of the imagination, considering all means as good, provided they produce effect. The grand requisite, therefore, in the romantic, is virtually to declare that the writer is not deficient in this quality, and that he has produced something piquant and new. It is to be doubted that many composers would venture to employ so dangerous a term, if they knew its true value." -The Harmonicon, 1830 {Longyear vi) 
Source:
Longyear, Ray M. Nineteenth-Century Romanticism in Music. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1988. 
Sony Classical. Sony Music Entertainment. 2001. <http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/eras/romhist.html>

--------------------------Romantic Writers and Music----------------

But how often in the soul of the musician does the music sound at the same moment as the words of the poet, and, above all, the poet's language in the general language of music?-From time to time the musician is clearly conscious of having thought of the melody without any relation to the words, and it springs forth with a reading of the poem as if awakened by a magic touch.
- E. T. A. Hoffman (Rosen 66)
During the Romantic Age, music became a language. Two independent forms of expression-music and poetry-shifted in power under the quill of a composer. Schlegel comments in fragment 444 of the Atheneum: 
Whoever has a feeling, however, for the wonderful affinity of all the arts and sciences will at least not consider the matter from the superficial and so-called natural point of view, according to which music should be nothing more than the language of sentiment, and he will find a certain tendency of all pure instrumental music to philosophy not inherently impossible. Must not pure instrumental music itself create its own text? And is not the theme in it developed, confirmed, varied, and contrasted in the same way as the object of meditation in a philosophical series of ideas? (Rosen 72-73)
Johann Wilhelm Ritter was the first to develop the idea that music is a language, "the first of mankind (Rosen 59)." E.T.A. Hoffmann developed the idea further in Kreisleriana, which greatly inspired the music of Schumann, among others. Music became "individualized" in words, specifically in the German Leid, where piano accompanied voice (Rosen 61). After 1770, writers used musicians as literary figures; the ultimate literary figure being Kreisler, of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Kreisleriana. 
The Weimar Classicists Schiller and Herder repsecitively melded music into their dramas and collected folk songs. Goethe wrote texts for Singspiele, for amateur court productions, and later became director of the court theater. Although many of Goethe's operatta liberttos were composed, his musical endeavors had no lasting appeal to the public. Instead, his talent as a poet challenged composers to set his lyrical poems to music; "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt (None but the Lonely Heart)," "Kennst du das Land (Know'st thou the land)," and Erlkönig inspired their musical equivalents. Yet the Weimar Classicists held a conservative attitude towards music, favoring the Classical composers to the Romantics. 
The Romantic writers however, looked at their respective music differently. Wackenroder believed music could stimulate thought and imagination. Ludwig Tieck considered instrumental music the highest form of artistic expression. Tieck's musical inspiration embodied itself in Die Verkehrte Welt (The Upside-Down World); the work commenced with his "Symphony," a prose representation of music. Novalis shared in Tieck's opinion and established a proposal for literature to detach from reality: "Poems-simply sounding well and filled with beautiful words-but also without any sense or logic-at most single stanzas intelligible-they must be like mere broken pieces of the most varied things (Rosen 76)." To many artists and writers, including Novalis, the power of music was its ability to be conceived in the absence of reality. Works that represented the attempt to break art from reality include Coleridge's Kubla Khan (1798), Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1760-1767), Diderot's Jacques le fataliste (1796), Hölderlin's Hyperion (1797-1799), and Brentano's Godwi (1801); each work contains a reference to a continuation beyond itself, a hint that there is more to come, imitative of the musical paradox evident in Haydn's Quartet in D Major, op. 50, no.6, which begins with the final cadence as the opening theme (Rosen 77). 
All of the German Romantic writers, including French poets Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine beheld music as a synaesthesia where colors and tones combined to produce a dream-like effect. Bettina Brentano von Arnim, Clemens Brentano's sister, believed music was a divine and sensuous art and an emotional, soul-fulfilling experience. Also, many Romantic writers pursued music as a creative outlet. E.T.A. Hoffmann was the most musical of the German Romantics and distinguished himself greatly in German Romantic Opera with Undine (1816). His literature also provided the plots to Tchaikovsky's ballet suite, The Nutcracker (1892) and Offenbach's opera, Les Contes d'Hoffmann (1881). 

In France, Romanticism did not fully evolve until 1830 and Romanticism in music did not completely captivate audiences until the 1880s. Henri Beyle, or Stendhal as he called himself, was more interested in music than his contemporary French writers. Honoré de Balzac wrote two musical novellas-Massimilla Doni and Gambara-to express his interest in Italian opera and French Grand Opera. In addition, Théophile Gautier publicly supported Berlioz and Wagner. Lord Byorn's influence on Berlioz would give rise to a symphony inspired by Childe Harold, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Rienzi (1835) would inspire one of the first of Wagner's operas. In feneral, the French Romantics used music to illustrate social environment, and thus their work is a great resource in the study of the sociological history of music (Longyear 18). Evidently, the Romantic writers contributed to the growing popularity in Romantic music and in turn gave inspiration to Romantic composers, of whom many had interests in literature and art. 
Source:
Longyear, Ray M. Nineteenth-Century Romanticism in Music. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1988. 
Rosen, Charles. The Romantic Generation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. 

-------------------Romantic Opera------------------

Operas are like dramas in which the text is set to music and the
performance includes singers and orchestra. Many operas also have instrumental interludes (intermezzi) and dances, extended ballets that interrupt the story.
The first traces of opera are from Italy: it was an entertainment for the aristocracy; the performances were staged on outdoor terraces or any place adapted for the opera's needs. The first operas are dated in the last years of the 16th century, and it started out small.
However, as time progressed, this new form of entertainment became popular, and attained its apotheosis in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many European composers wrote operas that were so successful that they were invited to hold in court the sumptuous opera houses of Naples, Saint Petersburg, Rome, Venice, Milan, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and even New Orleans, which had a great importance for the French opera in the 19th century. Many discoveries that shaped the course of music have their origins in opera's history. Thanks to the magic of romanticism, opera became more grandiose and lush. In grand opera in particular, we find larger orchestras, huge choruses, and incredible harmonies. Romanticism brought a change in subjects, tempestuous and strong romances; unstable, mad or devastated characters, and supernatural or occult elements. This heavily emotional
environment brought an interest toward realism and contemporary social issues. However themes of royalty, myths, remained very popular. On the other hand, operas featured innovative characters as artists, peasants, and even prostitutes.

The romantic novel inspired Italian operas. Gioacchino Rossini was one of the key figures of Italian new style of opera: he mastered the sparkiling opera buffa. All of his operas except Turco are still in the operatic repertory of
today. His operas focus on clear and pointed orchestration, creating a climax through a lengthy, gradual crescendo. Rossini is pungent, vigorous, and dramatic. His contemporary Vincenzo Bellini is aristocratic and languid. Bellini worked with the best singers of his day, providing elegant melodies decorated with innovative embellishments. His major work is Puritani (1835). His melodies gained favor for their simple, lyrical poise. Conteporary to Rossini and Bellini, was Donizetti, one of the most prolific composer of that age. His melodies were less delicate than Bellini's but not as violent in motion as Rossini's. Donizetti is the precursor of Verdi, his skill in creating lyricism, dramatic moments and theatricality are a clear demonstration of his gift. But Donizetti's true power was not clear until the middle ages [Anna Bolena (1830)].

As said, Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini created the bridge between the post-Neapolitans and Giuseppe Verdi, considered the greatest of Italian opera composers. Verdi created his style without caring of contemporary musical fashions and was more likely to be influenced by the works of Beethoven and Joseph Haydn than by what was happening in other opera houses. After Verdi's time, it was evident that Italy needed a successor
to carry the quality of serious opera forward. What was developed from Verdi's realism was a movement called Verismo (Italian for "realism"). Verismo composers include Pietro Mascagni and Ruggero Leoncavallo. Their most popular operas were Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana (1890) and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (1892) Composer Giacomo Puccini followed verismo and produced warm and beautiful melodies. Examples are La Bohème (1896), Madama Butterfly (1904).
Apart from Verdi, the major character in 19th-century opera was a Richard Wagner from Germany. German Opera wasn't defined at the beginning of the romantic period; the popular German Singspiel flourished later than the opera buffa and opéra comique. However, the poets Friedrich von Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe encouraged german society to adopt the Singspiel, after Mozart's death. So, Romanticism appeared with Fidelio (1805), the only opera by Ludwig van Beethoven. The first works of Wagner were a little influenced by Weber and
Marschner, and Spontini and Cherubini. Rienzi (1842), his first successful opera, was incredibly heroic and it was emulated and discussed by the members of school of French grand opera. Tristan und Isolde (1865) classical music for the next century. His last masterpiece, Parsifal (1882), was a great combination of Wagner's ability about vocal writing and orchestration and it dealed with the myth of the Holy Grail. Such beautiful works, anyway, could not be confined, and it was immediately stolen by other opera houses. Every critic agrees that 'there is no more fitting capstone to Wagner's work than Parsifal'.

Eugène Scribe, a playwright, and Giacomo Meyerbeer, a German émigré delighted for three decades France and Europe with the amazing innovation of opéra grande (grand opera). Scribe and Meyerbeer collaborated in le Diable (1831), Le Prophète (1849), and L'Africaine (1865) and others opera treating historical fact and mass bloodshed with equal unconcern. Meyerbeer is the creator of new novel orchestral effects, and choreography innovations: it is interesting to notice that Le Prophète devotes half an hour to an ice-skating ballet. Georges Bizet had his success with opéra comique. In Carmen (1875) Bizet infused that incisive musical energy missing from the French operatic works since Rameau. Many other composers contribuited to the romantic opera. Camille Saint-Saëns composed Samson et Dalila (1877), Jules Massenet produced Manon (1884), based on a novel by Abbé Prévost, and his great masterpiece, Werther (1892), based on a novel by Goethe. Claude Debussy presented Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), his only complete opera, that was trying to emulate Wagner's Tristan in melting music and drama.

Debussy's did it in a new way: his music is delicate, timed to natural rhythms, and accompanied by unusual harmonies. Among other composer Jacques Offenbach was another German émigre who came to Paris and achieved a great success: Parisian operetta, his compositions include Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld, 1858), La Belle Hélène (1864), La Vie Parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), and La Périchole (1868).
Russia and central Europe were influenced by Italian, French, and German romantic opera and vice versa. Any other composer dealing with the influence of Wagner's operas, could not avoid to be influenced by Modest Mussorgsky of Russia. He committed himself to create a characteristically Russian opera, he rejected the old fashion of His compatriot Mikhail Glinka in A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Russlan and Ludmilla (1842). Mussorgsky adapted a grim drama of psychological realism, Aleksandr Pushkin's tragedy Boris Godunov in 1874. We also mention Prince Igor (1889) by Aleksandr Borodin, an episodic military drama completed by Aleksandr Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov after Borodin's death.
Czech opera followed essentially two movements: one of pro-Russian Slovaks and the other of German-influenced Bohemians. The most important figure among the Bohemians was Antonín Dvorák. Prague was the main city of Bohemian culture, and its most recognizable operatic figure was Bedrich Smetana [The Bartered Bride (1866)].
Sources:
LA scrittura e L'interpretazione VOLUME 2: Dal barocco al romanticismo, G.B. Palumbo Editore, Romano Luperini, Pietro Cataldi, Lidia Marchiani, Franco Marchese, Firenze 1997

------------------Romantic Ballet------------------------

In 1820, the Romantic period in ballet arose in Milan when Carlo Blasis introduced new ballet techniques in his book The Theory and Practice of the Art of Dancing and the Code of Terpisichore (1823). The methods he illustrated are precisely the methods used today in modern ballet. Then, Marie Taglioni, at the age of 18, began dancing sur les pointes (on the toes). As others followed her example, the tutu and the blocked toe were developed to allow freer movements. It was at this time that women began to dominate ballet and men functioned to support the ballerina. The stars of the ballet included Maria Taglioni, Fanny Elssler, Carlotta Grisi, Lucille Grahn, and Fanny Cerrito. Cyril Beamont, the proprietor of a world-famous bookstore on dance, described the ballerina of the Romantic Period as "that elusive, fascinating, mocking vision, half woman, half goddess, which haunted the imaginations of so many poets, painters, writers, and musicians of the last century, and becoming their muse, inspired some to achieve masterpieces (Ballet Notes, Giselle par. 4)." 
Among the great masters of the ballet were Filippo Taglioni who first choreographed La Sylphide (1832), ballet choreographer Auguste Bournonville, ballet master and creator Jules Perrot, ballet technician Carlo Blasis, Charles Didelot, who revolutionized Russian ballet, Marius Petipa, who was the first to divide ballet techniques into 7 categories, and Jean-Georges Noverre, who wrote what is considered the most important ballet book of all time. The Marquis de Saint-Georges wrote 12 ballets and 80 operas, and cooperated with Théophile Gautier in the production of Giselle (1841). 
Many great ballets were produced at this time. The most early productions include La Sylphide (1823), La Somnambule (1827), La Gypsy (1839), Giselle (1841), and La Péri (1843). By 1850, Romantic ballet lapsed into dormancy until 1870, with the performance of Coppélia at the Paris Opera House. In 1875, Marius Petipa choreographed Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake (1895), and Raymonda (1898) for the Russian ballet's Imperial Theater. Tchaikovsky was comissioned to create music for Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty (1890), and The Nutcracker (1892), all of which featured Romantic themes; E.T.A. Hoffman wrote the original fairy tale of The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty are created after German fairy tales themselves. It was during this time that ballet had its renaissance, and the greatest ballets of all time were choreographed, performed, and applauded. 
La Sylphide
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In 1832, La Sylphide, starring Marie Taglioni and choreographed by her father Filippo Taglioni, premiered at the Paris Opera. La Sylphide, based loosely on Charles Nodier's Trilby; ou, Le Lutin d'Argail (1822), illustrated the story of a supernatural female creature, half-human and half-bird, doomed to an eternity of dancing. The Sylphide falls in love with James, a Scottish peasant, who intends to marry Effie, a peasant girl. However, before the marriage takes place, Sylphide shows herself to James. Consequently, he falls in love with her and runs away from his wedding. However, he is hard-pressed to keep her at his side, for she constantly flies away from him. One day, he crosses paths with Madge, a witch. Madge instructs James to tie a magic scarf around Sylphide's waist. He does this in the hopes that Sylphide's wings will disappear and she will be his forever; unfortunately, the scarf kills her and Sylphide falls into the arms of her friends, the Sylphs, as a grieved James stands aside to watch her die. The Slyphs retreat to the air with Sylphide and James tries to avenge her death by killing Madge, yet he fails for she strikes him first. The ballet ends with James' death and Madge's celebration of victory.
It is not very difficult to see the symbolism behind the simple tale; Sylphide represents an unattainable dream and James is the innocent, naïve hero. The plot is thoroughly consistent with the Romantic fairy tale; the ending is obviously not a happy one and the focus clearly remains on the disparity between reality and illusion. However, the plot of La Sylphide was not the only novelty that inspired succeeding ballets; Marie Taglioni was the first to don a bell-shaped, calf-length, white tutu with a boned bodice that would be prevalent in Romantic ballet. The ballet was also the first to be set to appropriate music. The setting of La Sylphide is Scotland, which, at the time, was considered an exotic and unfamiliar land. Thus it is essentially the first Romantic ballet, consistent with the Romantic traditions of exoticism, fantasy, and emotion. In 1836, Auguste Bournonville recreated La Sylphide through new music and choreography, and gave Lucille Grahn the main role of Sylphide. 
Giselle, ou Les Wilis 
One of the main reasons why Romantic ballet disappeared after 1850 was the silliness and superfluity that began to evolve in plot. A characteristic ballet with a silly plot is Giselle, which was the first ballet to emphasize the dramatic performance on the part of the dancers. Théophile Gautier was inspired for the ballet after reading Heinrich Heine's De l'Allemagne (1835), in which Heine described "sprites in white gowns with hems that are perpetually damp, fairies whose little satin feet mark the ceiling of the nuptial chamber, the snow-white Wilis who waltz pitilessly the whole night long, and wondrous apparitions encountered in the Hartz mountains and on the banks of the isle glimpsed in a mist bathed by German moonlight (BalletNotes, Giselle par. 9)." In 1841, an Italian dancer, Carlotta Grisi, danced the title role of Giselle, a collaboration between composer Adolphe Adam and choreographers Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot. 
Giselle is a story of Prince Albrecht, who disguises himself as Loys, a commoner, for the purpose of winning the heart of Giselle, a peasant girl, away from her rival suitor and the village gamekeeper, Hilarion. Albrecht declares his love for Giselle, and the village erupts in celebration and dancing. Giselle's mother warns her against participating as many girls have died following dancing on their wedding night. But despite her mother, Giselle dances with Albrecht and later with Princess Bathilde, who gives her a necklace. Albrecht leaves during the dance; however, when he returns, Hilarion, desperate for revenge, unsheathes the prince's sword, thereby revealing Albrecht's true identity. Subsequently, Hillarion blows Albrecht's horn to call upon the nobles. When they arrive, Albrecht takes the arm of Princess Bathilde, his betrothed, and claims that he was only participating in country dances for amusement and diversion. Giselle, shocked and grieved to the point of suicide, skewers herself with Albrecht's sword. In Act II, Giselle becomes a wili, white ghosts of deceased, jilted girls who dance the woods at night. At midnight, Hilarion visits Giselle's grave and mourns her death. Queen Myrtha, leader of the wilis, discovers Hilarion wandering in the woods. Meanwhile Albrecht appears, with lilies for Giselle's grave. He spots her ghost hovering above and follows her into the forest. Queen Myrtha orders the wilis to dance the two intruders to death, but Albrecht is protected by Giselle, whom he still loves. Giselle pleads for mercy to Queen Myrtha, who denies it, yet Giselle is able to sustain Albrecht until dawn. The wilis retreat from the woods at the first sign of light, and Albrecht is forgiven by Giselle and survives to live another day. 
Evidently, Giselle is the epitome of Romantic ballet. Another landmark credited to Giselle is in Petipa's production, where the ballet-blanc, corps of dancers in white, were introduced. 
Coppélia 
On May 25, 1870, the last Romantic ballet premiered at the Paris Opera House. Coppélia (1870) was produced before the siege of France and the Paris Opera's subsequent closure due to the Franco-Prussian war. Choreographed by Arthur Saint-Leon and with music by Léo Delibes, the ballet integrated nationalism, comedy and folk dance to tell a light-hearted story of an old Polish inventor, Coppélius, who tries to give life to a mechanical doll he calls Coppélia. 
One day, Coppélius puts his creation out on the balcony for the public to admire. Everyone believes Coppélia is the inventor's daughter, and that she is a real person, including Swanhilda and her lover Franz, who falls in love with Coppélia. Suddenly the whole village erupts in celebration and dancing, until the Burgomeister enters with an announcement of a celebration christened the "Masque of the Bell" in honor of the new bell for the town clock. He also adds that any couples married then will receive a bag of gold from the Duke. Swanhilda, wondering if Franz really loves her, shakes a sheaf of wheat. No sound comes from the wheat and Swanhilda concludes that Franz "loves her not." Not soon after she breaks her engagement to Franz. Meanwhile, Coppélius is harassed by the village boys and unwittingly drops his key. Swanhilda finds it and breaks into the inventor's house, intent on knowing who and what Coppélia is. They soon find out that she is only a doll. Coppélius enters to find the intruders. All of them exit quickly except for Swanhilda, who hides behind a curtain and switches clothes with Coppélia. Franz arrives and declares his love for Coppélia. The inventor feigns friendship and slips him a sleeping potion, intending to use Franz's spirit to make Coppélia alive through a magic spell. When Coppélius begins the magic spell, Swanhilda dances wildly and wreaks havoc in the inventor's house. She flees with Franz, and it is not long until Coppélius finds his inanimate Coppélia behind the curtain. The next day, the Masque of the Bell takes place and the newlywedded, including Franz and Swanhilda, are each given a bag of gold. Coppélius interrupts the celebration, furious with Swanhilda's recklessness and his broken dolls. To quiet him, the Duke gives him a bag of gold as well. The ballet ends in joy with "The Dance of the Hours," in which the various hours of the day are enacted, and the declaration of love between Swanhilda and Franz. 
Sources:
P., Tom W. The Dance Page. 10 Nov 1999. <http://www.panix.com/~twp/>
Footnotes- The Classics of Ballet. Sound Venture Productions Ottawa Limited. 1999 
<http://www.soundventure.com/web/footnotes/index.html>
Historical Ballet Notes. BalletMet Colombus. 2001. <http://www.balletmet.org/balletnotes.html>
Coppelia. Alexandra Ballet. 2001. http://www.alexandraballet.org/coppelia.htm

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Art -->

--------------------Balance of Power------------------------

Neoclassical, Romantic, and Realist Art
From the period of 1800 to 1850, three conflicting schools of thought were present on the canvas-Neoclassicism ( 1750-1830), Romanticism (1800-1850), and Realism (1830-1900). These three schools of art flourished side by side. 
In 1775, Winckelmann published Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Art. In this important volume of art history, Winckelmann defined classic as "art [that] should aim at noble simplicity and calm gradeur (Clark 20)." Such would be achieved through reviving the classical sculptures and art of Greece and Rome and including such themes as order, reason, and discipline, often among an idyllic setting. An example of a typical neoclassic painting is Jacques-Louis David's Death of Socrates (1787).The painting is obviously based on a historical moment in ancient Greek history. Socrates' face is calm and stoic, even as he is about to swallow the hemlock, and his body is idealized. The brush strokes are smooth and barely noticeable. Yet the artist, David, was a classicist that challenged Winckelmann's doctrines of Classicism. His classicism "was nourished by a contact with nature and a passionate involvement with human life and society (Clark 21)." Of course, this was all before the revolution. David would later unveil his own political opinions through his paintings The Death of Marat and Napoleon crossing the Alps. 
The Revolution marked an era of change; the age of balance and order was to be done away with. Strong imagination and wild emotion governed reason and intellect. This called for a defiance of the conventional principles of art to create more original and profound work. The Romantics proclaimed a return to nature-the sky would fill typically fill 3/4 of the page and the people admiring the landscape would be minuscule in comparison. Common themes include family, nature, heroism, religion, and emotion (especially fear), anger, love, and hope. Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830) symbolized the sweeping away of classicism; in the painting, the commoners, not the distinguished generals, march with liberty. Natural, muted, and soft colors as well as an abundance of light dominated the landscapes of Joseph Malford William Turner, John Constable, and Caspar David Friedrich. 
The death of Delacroix in 1863 allowed Realism to be fully pronounced. Yet its rebellious and revolutionary nature made it only a continuation of Romanticism. Symbolists in literature bore the slogan "art for art's sake," yet Romanticism did not altogether disappear (Longyear 20). Realist art came with Edgar Degas; daily life and common people were the center of the canvas. Artists attempted to portray light as it really looked and the human body was not idealized. Landscapes were irrelevant; only the struggle of the working class was worth painting. However Jean-Francois Millet's drab and unpleasant pictures of rustic and working-class life contained some elements of eroticism and color techniques borrowed from Decamps and Goya. Millet was thought a socialist for his work; in response, he merely stated "the human side of art is what touches me most" (Clark 293). Evidently Romanticism was not altogether dead. By the early 1900s, Romanticism would directly influence the symbolist, expressionist, and surrealist movements. 

------------------Themes---------------------

Romanticism on the global scale
Visionary and surreal, frightening and melancholy, turbulent and tranquil-Romantic artists blended emotion and imagination to create fascinating and fearsome pieces that are still revered today. Each country had its own version of Romanticism. In France, Théodore Géricault's mastery of the brush contrasted light and dark tones to evoke strong emotions such as suffering, isolation and vulnerability, both of which Romantics believed were indispensable to the human condition. Eugène Delacroix conveyed the sublime through the strong senses of violence, fear, and horror evoked from his paintings. In Germany, Caspar David Friedrich's fixation on light and landscape highlighted the melancholy and vastness of the sublime. Nature's triumph and power over man, a common theme among Romantics, is often present in Friedrich's oil paintings. The Nazarenes, a school of German romantics, attempted to recover medieval religious art through the painting of mythology and fairy tales. Their attempts would be continued by a later school of Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites. In England, landscapes dominated; Samuel Palmer, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner defied conventional principles of landscape painting. Constable breathed feeling into the ordinary with his impressionistic strokes. Turner is often known as the first impressionist; although his early work reflected the calm and majestic landscapes of Claude Lorrain, the blur of energy and light that arose from the painting of a locomotive foretold of Monet and Van Gogh. In the United States, the Hudson River School painted forests and mountains with grandeur and feeling. The late romantics constituted of the Barbizon school in France which continued the painting of landscapes and the Pre-Raphaelites in England which utilized the style of the Nazarenes. Romanticism did not only touch painting; Rodin communicated power and emotion through his bronze sculptures. Evidently, the unconventional, non-conforming and individualistic spirit of the Romantic movement influenced impressionism, symbolism, expressionism and surrealism. 
Rebellion and Disillusionment: Themes 
Painted in melancholy, brooding tones, Romantic art conveyed the dreary hopelessness that came with increased progress in science. Also, everyone was quite sick of reason and order. Denis Diderot remarked: "Everything changes, everything passes away. Nothing remains but the Sum. The world endlessly begins and ends... Alive, I act and react en masse... Dead, I act and react in molecules (Clay 8)." Disillusioned by the finality of science, and daunted by emptiness and the absence of God, Romantic artists sought to provide themselves with an alternate answer. Hints of existentialism arose in philosophy. In 1790, French-Swiss political writer and novelist Benjamin Constant reflected a grim and not-so-reassuring conclusion: "God... died before finishing his work... We are like clocks without hands, clocks whose mechanisms, endowed with intelligence, continue to work until worn out (Clay 11)." A diversion came full force as the macabre gained increasing popularity in the Paris Salon in 1775, replacing the paintings of ruins that were in vogue in the middle of the 18th century. Artist struggled to paint the emotion of fear, as fear was the source of the sublime (Clark 20). British writer and politician Edmund Burke perceived beauty in delicacy and harmony and the sublime with vastness, obscurity, and horror (Encarta par. 2). Another solution came through the most liberal use of sexuality (as demonstrated by the Marquis de Sade), magic, and drugs (seen through the writings of De Quincey and Baudelaire). These three elements were used as part of the aesthetic quality of art. Its purpose was simple: to counteract and offer an escape from the most-dreaded emptiness. 
Yet science was a necessary evil. Feelings among the Romantics were at best mixed. One painter's interest in astronomy yielded the "moonscape," which blended science and beauty. On the other side of the panel, artists set their minds on the aspects of nature they could see and touch. Thus a garden was intended to make one forget, the country was believed to be "natural," and the city was seen as wicked or evil (Clay 12). Also, revolution and reform brought a welcome change. During the upheavals in France, most writers and artists favored the provisionary government and its protector General Cavaignac over Robespierre and Babeuf during the Revolution. The heroism displayed in the revolution immediately became part of the subject matter of art. Delacroix described the Empire and the age of Napoleon as healthy and beneficial: "The life of Napoleon is the event of the century for all the arts (Clay 15)." But Delacroix was wrong. During the time of the Empire (1810-1813), according to Delécluze, the period was ridden with "stale narrations" and "countless bad pictures" (Clay 15) The French Revolution also caused a revival of different periods in history-elements of the classical, medieval, Egyptian, and Gothic periods emerged in architecture and art. 
The industrial revolution brought technology and industry to English paintings. The smoke of the railroads and factories, the conformed, iron structures of bridges and the Crystal Palace, the whirrings and whistlings of the textile mill-all were portrayed in 50 odd pictures as wonderful and awesome. Yet the French Romantics ignored industrialization. Gautier publicly proclaimed the fact that industry regulated life. Delacroix went as far as insulting the English and their abominable interest in their lifeless contraptions. At the same time, the Romantics were ignorant of the dangerous working conditions and greed that industrialization brought. Only Lord Byron realized that it was such, and in vain, spoke of it in the House of Lords in 1812. Only realists would paint the picture accurately. They dared to depict the poverty and filthiness of the working class, however unpleasant and unheroic it might be. Another horror that went unquestioned was the African slave trade. Turner's watercolor, Slavers Throwing Overboard the dead and Dying- Typhoon Coming On (1840), and Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814) were two such of the few Romantic works that dared to depict it. 
Changes in the art form became questioned with the invention of the daugerreotype, which was perfected in 1837. It, along with wax museums, provided an objective, realistic view of art. Also, the increasing instability of the life of an artist urged more artists to become more original. Artists were considered geniuses, prophets, and their intuition considered indispensable. But by 1847, the effusion of originality ceased and art became more restrained. An artist's ideas were unbalanced by revolution and social and religious reforms. 
Sources:
Clay, Jean. Romanticism. New York: The Vendome Press, 1981 
"Romanticism (art)," Microsoft(r) Encarta(r) Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com (c) 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved

-----------------Techniques-----------------------

Transforming the canvas: Techniques 
Romantic artists saw the painting surface as a mere canvas, unlike their predecessors, who saw the painting surface as a "pane of glass interposed between the artist and his subject" (Clay 25). The simplicity of "pure line" as opposed to the pomp and circumstance of the "sculptural relief" pushed the engraving in among the other great art forms (Clay 25).The transparency and freedom in color that the watercolor provided raised great interest. To expand the horizons of expression, artists experimented with new materials, such as wax, tempera, and oil. At this point it was evident that the traditional principle of technical categories in art began to lose its boundaries. 
Caspar David Friedrich introduced the theme of the single, open window. The contrast between the inside and the outside was found thoroughly interesting by his contemporaries. In another painting, Friedrich made the impression of a hole, surrounded by fractured pieces of rock. Friedrich said of these paintings: "The painter should not paint merely what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him (Clay 69)." Caspar Wolf's paintings of caves and rock, depicting voids and shadows, were his own experiments with color and shape. They were successful in achieving a striking distance and volume through abstract strokes and variations in color. The landscape continued to broaden on the canvas; whole mountains, sometimes obscured by thick fog and mist, with no sparing of depth and dimension raised nature up to a colossal height, and man, with his limited view, strained his eyes to see it. Background and foreground collided as distance was brought forward and made more pronounced-the landscape being reduced to two dimensions. Perspective disintegrated, creating pre-mature impressionism. The freedom that watercolor provided made such work all the more provocative. Barren, isolated rock brought out the sublime. Trees were no longer mere decorations, they were impediments, their branches twisting to the sky and occupying the whole of the picture plane. Soil and earth were textured and in seascapes, the skies and the ocean pushed each other out of view along the horizon. Artists reintroduced a new object onto the seascape-the tragedy of a burning ship. Fire in the sky and fire in the water replaced the calm, lifeless sea. Masses of bodies melted into a dark, sinking craft, bringing forth disaster and drama. The sky, on one canvas calm and awe-inspiring, becomes stormy and terrible on the next. 
Another innovation in form reduced the painting to mere curves and lines and masses of shadowy color. Henry Fuseli's method used broad, incoherent brush strokes to create a sense of chaos and motion. James Jeffreys and Henry Fuseli's pencil and ink washes fragmented Winckelman's sense of art through its depiction of the erotic and the macabre, where Greek and Roman art served only as a vessel. The "reserve" that watercolor brought to the painting surface was certainly ideal for this. William Blake's watercolor's The Circle of the Lustful: Paolo and Francesca (1824) use of simple lines and masses of color create a frightening surreal and abstract mood. Curves struggled to break free of the rectangular canvas. In this simple world of lines, hatching became the means of establishing texture. The only symmetry on the canvas appeared in monuments, cemetery gates, and wooden crosses, so much that it became the counterpart of grave matters-religion and death. Delacroix's paintings of horses were his attempt to unite foreground with background; the energetic curves and musculature of a noble creature wavered in the wind and broke free of the ground. Delacroix's great masterpiece Death of Sardanapalus (1828) attempted to capture the gore and violence of Byron's play through use of little depth and much chaos. 
At once, with the arrival of the gothic novel, monsters and unimaginable horrors plastered the imaginations of Romantic artists. Paintings began to contrast light from dark, sun from shadow, flesh from rock. From the darkness of the canvas, the dreaded unknown and the unconscious arose. The fogs and mists of Friedrich's landscapes conveyed mystery and melancholy. The blurring of shape and form gave rise to Turner's impressionism. Sea, smoke, and sky became one in his oil Snow Storm- Steamboat off a Harborm's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and Going by the Lead (1842). Contrasts between color and background are defined and explored with Romanticism. Hubert Robert's oils of burning buildings are experiments with bright color as is John Martin's The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium (1841), where the fires of hell burn brilliantly to welcome its winged guests. Such contrast is also demonstrated in the paintings of figures against black backgrounds. The power of blending together contrasting colors is evident in the paintings of Turner, Blake, and Palmer. 
The canvas expanded with an assemblage of buildings, people and objects; Jean-Baptiste Greuze's The Punished Son (1778) directly shares a story of sickness, anger, and despair with 8 characters displaying a variety of emotions. Quantity and quality were key. One could see giants and colossal buildings on the same lines as the miniature people in the foreground. Conventional and real size and scale vanished. 
During the Romantic era, the canvas had turned into a tool only as useful as the artist's brush. 
Sources:
Clay, Jean. Romanticism. New York: The Vendome Press, 1981

------------------Pre-Raphaelites-------------------

The Visual Threshold of British Romanticism
Literary Romanticism's influence on all aspects of culture cannot be underestimated. Its lyrical poetry did not fail to instigate the imaginations of Romantic composers and Romantic artists. Yet each medium took its own course. Literature, unfortunately, faded first, followed by art. The music, however, became immortal. Although lulled into the dimmest corners of society, the spirit of Romanticism paraded on, unnoticed during the reign of Victorianism, until 1848. 
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood can be called something of a miracle. In the midst of the materialism and neo-classicism of the Victorian Age, three men, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais, declared their dissatisfaction with the low standards of British art and their rebellion against the artistic ideals of the British Royal Academy. In 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood formed. The Royal Academy Schools in England could not accommodate all aspiring artists and thus young artists formed groups and artistic circles to substitute for their lack of official training. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was one of these groups. Rather than paint still-lifes, seascapes, and landscapes, the Pre-Raphaelites chose to continue the work of the German Nazarenes and to paint landscapes un-idealized. Thus they were careful to avoid John Ruskin's description of contemporary art: "cattle-pieces and sea-pieces and fruit-pieces and family-pieces, the eternal brown cows in ditches, and white sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in saucers, and foolish faces in simpers (The PRB par. 5)." Their movement was a "primitivist" movement, as they chose to mirror the art that came before Raphael and the High-Renaissance, before the year 1500. Thus their subjects came from mythology, religion, and poetry (Prettejohn 18). 
They had also published a journal, titled The Germ: Thoughts Towards Art and Poetry. The Germ also harbored the poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister, Christina Rossetti. Her career as a poet would be propelled through such publicity. It was criticized most by Charles Dickens, but under the support of John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites were seen in a more favorable light. After their first exhibit in 1849, several other young artists joined the Brotherhood. James Collinson, William Michael Rossetti (Dante's younger brother), Thomas Woolner, and Frederic George Stephens, along with the three founders, were the first seven original members of the brotherhood. After 1850, the three founders of the Brotherhood split to pursue their own interests. However, artists adopting the same forms and styles of the original brotherhood emerged. These included Ford Madox Brown and Arthur Hughes. A second generation of Pre-Raphaelites arose, under the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Sandys, William Morris, Simeon Solomon, and Evelyn de Morgan carried on the tradition of Pre-Raphaelite painting. Several artists, Sir Frank Dicksee, John William Waterhouse, and Frederic Leighton painted in the same style but were not specifically connected to the movement. 
The first exhibit in 1849 included Rossetti's The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1848-9), Millais' Isabella (1848-9), and Hunt's Rienzi Vowing to Obtain Justice for the Death of his Young Brother (1848-9). Millais, of course, received inspiration from Keats' poem, as Hunt depicted a scene from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Rienzi. Pre-Raphaelite painting sprouted from Romantic poetry and prose; thus the Pre-Raphaelite style is said to be more literary in nature than visual (Prettejohn 135). Yet the techniques used by the Pre-Raphaelites were quite innovative in themselves. Their use of bright color on white backgrounds gave a unique vividness to their paintings. Also, their desire for extreme detail made their paintings comparable to contemporary color photographs. A Pre-Raphaelite would not hesitate to directly observe a single leaf for the purpose of painting it realistically, nor would the artist dare to ignore the unpleasant blight and mold on a reed. Ruskin's thoughts on such devotion to detail became the creed of the Pre-Raphaelites in his 1851 pamphlet on the subject: "They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to penetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing (Prettejohn 172)." 
Literature's influence on Pre-Raphaelitism is undeniable. Tennyson's doomed fairy, The Lady of Shallot (1832) is a subject of great interest among the Pre-Raphaelites. The most notable being William Holman Hunt's painting The Lady of Shallot (1886-1905) of her entangled in a web of thread as she looks into her mirror and glimpses Lancelot. A preliminary sketch of the work came in 1850. It was the earliest depiction of Tennyson's lady, and it was followed by the sketches of Elizabeth Siddall, Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Paintings of the lady done in Pre-Raphaelite style that are greatly admired today are both of John William Waterhouse's paintings, Sidney Meteyard's painting of the lady "half sick of shadows," and Arthur Hughes' painting of the lady floating down the river in her barge. John Keats' poem, Isabella and the Pot of Basil, is immortalized by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and John William Waterhouse. But perhaps the most widely portrayed product of Romanticism is Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Sir Frank Dicksee and John William Waterhouse's paintings are the most remarkable. Dicksee's painting reveals the unfortunate knight standing alongside la belle, who is atop his steed. He looks up to her in longing: "I set her on my pacing steed,/And nothing else saw all day long;/For sideways would she lean, and sing/A faery's song" (Artmagick, par. 5). Waterhouse's knight is entangled in la belle's hair. Arthur Hughes' painting, although not quite accurate, shows the knight's vision of the spirits he dreams of: "I saw pale kings, and princes too,/Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;/Who cry'd- "La belle Dame sans meric/Hath thee in thrall (Artmagick par. 10)!" Keats' Lamia is also illustrated by John William Waterhouse. Thus the Romantic poets were immortalized by the Pre-Raphaelites. 
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and artists who associated themselves with Pre-Raphaelitism ventured to write their own poetry as well. The poetry of William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall contain Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite themes. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Pre-Raphaelitism of the 19th and early 20th centuries carried on the traditions of Romanticism, especially its ability to incite shock and horror as well as admiration and respect.
Sources:
Bob Speel. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 19 Aug 1996. <http://www.speel.demon.co.uk/other/prb.htm>
Prettejohn, Elizabeth. The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Keats, John. "La Belle Dame sans Merci." ArtMagick. ArtMagick. 2001. <http://www.artmagick.com/faq.asp>

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Drama -->

--------------The Theater------------------

His peers, his audience, and previous works heavily influence a writer. However, what is most peremptory is the past history. If Shakespeare had ceased to exist, there would be no genre of drama in which scholars term as Romantic. Shakespeare, not only popular in his day, is incomparable to any virtuoso in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and his shadow upon the brush of talent in Coleridge or Keats is undeniable. Shakespeare affected the themes of Romantics along with diction, tone, and style. For example, hints of Macbeth are blatant in plays such as Lillo's Fatal Curiosity or Shelley's The Cenci. Along with Shakespeare there was the schism of the seventeenth century. It was a team of "entertainers to the Jacobean gentry," Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Donohue 15). It was the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher that has transcended languages and has lasted through the Restoration period. Due to the availability of their works, the have heavily influenced the style of Romantic writers. Most plays either openly or clandestinely derive from those that come before. And in the case of Romantic literalists, Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Fletcher heavily influenced them.
From the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, there was a shift as there was an increase in the predilection of subjectivity and the developing concept of innocence as the exemplary state of innateness. Dramatic comedy writers such as Cumberland felt that comedy was not only to entertain, but it was set out to reform the minds of common folk in ways that the privileged could by means of vacation or travel. Cumberland tried to bring forth positive sentiments towards characters deemed eccentric. In Sheridan's Pizarro, ideas of human liberty under a threat from Napoleonic France were analyzed. He attracted audiences through the spectacle of lavish music and lyrical songs. Poetic drama also was a maverick in the midst of old genres, old concepts, and old morals. The Cenci was the epitome of this concept. Reading this poetic drama would enlighten audiences of a different form, idea, and most importantly it would elucidate the Romantic theory of radical innocence that is still with us today. 
The Romantic dramatists forever changed the genre as they let emotion fill the theme of their plays.The Romantic writers introduced several aspects into the genre. The product of the "romantic school" of acting from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries was an age that explored heroism and his elusive personality. For the first time, through writers such as Kemble, the usage of landscape to reflect a character's mood and personality was available. Another addendum was a technique in speech of frequent pauses with habitual grace and dignity. A rest or stop before a string of sentences emphasized importance. These were all contributions from writers of the late eighteenth century.
In the early nineteenth century, an idea developed of paramount importance. Emerging from the late onset of the last century, there was the notion that Shakespearean works could exist independent of theatrical performance. The idea of a perfect actor in a perfect production became so important that writers were classified based on their awareness of this fact. Of this concept came two important writers Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt. These two men created ideal productions in the mind and on the stage; they fused eighteenth-century drama traditions with their original ideas of human nature to create something erudite and new. 
The concept of ideal human nature was the theme song of Romantic Drama. The development of philosophy created a desire to analyze the motives behind existence and came up with the idea that man was meaningless unless referred to the state of mind that prompted it. In analyzing the human purpose, new understandings of dramatic character also occurred. Despite the range of acting styles of Garrick, Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Cooke, and Keane there was a fundamental concern for elucidating the motives of the dramatic character. 
Sources:
Donohue, Joseph W. Jr. Dramatic Character in the English Romantic Age. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970

--------------The Theater-------------------

The West Indian
The West Indian was first performed at Drury Lane in 1770. Cumberland, with The West Indian, combined two characters, each a victim of prejudice. He employs the idea of trail, where the main character's ability to respond successfully and proves his worth in the eyes of others. In the opening scene, Stockwell, who manages affairs for Belcour, is revealed to tell his clerk, Stukely, that he is actually Belcour's father. However, he does not wish to reveal this fact to his son because he believes that he will discover more of Belcour's character if his identity was not revealed. Belcour is the product of a secret marriage of Stockwell and the daughter of a West Indian planter who is now dead. Forced by circumstances to introduce their child into the family as a foundling, Stockwell is hopeful when the planter benevolently adopts the young man as his own son and made him heir to his vast Jamaican holdings. As Belcour grows into a man, he sets sail for England to try out the civilization of his foster father while still believing himself a Creole. Belcour leaves Stockwell to pursue Louisa Dudley, yet instead he sympathizes for Captain Dudley who is in financial ruin. He leaves the Captain with two hundred pounds. After a series of endeavors, Belcour claims Louisa's hand and Stockwell reveals his identity.
Cumberland's reason for writing The West Indian was to mend the hearts of his audience by delivering them from the vanity and snobbery that impoverished their lives. The audience could feel benevolence for the social outcast without having really compromised their own social position. The author showed what not men were, but what they ought to be. 

Pizarro
Pizarro was a tragedy adapted by Sheridan from a German play by Kotzbue on the Spanish conqueror of Peru. A commercial success in its own time, Pizarro achieved recognition comparable to The Beggar's Opera. The original German play consists of numerous characters. The chief characters is Pizarro, a Spanish explorer who wants to grasp a piece of the New World; Elvira, his paramour whom he seduced when she was a novice in a convent; Alonzo, a young Spanish warrior who discover the cruel acts of Pizarro and is "married" to Cora; and Rolla, the chief of the Inca tribe who holds an undying love for the wife of Alonzo, Cora. The story sets in the fortress of the Inca tribe, a series of battles waged by Spanish and Peruvian troops are the main events. In one battle, Alonzo is captured by Spanish troops and Rolla risks his life to save him. Rolla disguises himself as a monk and creeps into the dungeon where Alonzo is kept for his execution. He gives Alonzo his personal disguise and on his own way out, Elvira sees him. She shares her plan of murdering Pizarro with Rolla. Pretending to agree to the murder, Rolla goes to the tent of Pizarro. There, Pizarro wakes but accepts Rolla's challenge to his magnanimity by setting him free. Meanwhile, Alonzo returns home to Cora, but Rolla is captured and sentenced to death. When two Spanish soldiers have kidnapped the infant son of Alonzo and Cora, Rolla takes the child from them and escapes by traversing a bridge over a mountain stream. A bullet from a Spanish weapon mortally wounds him and he returns dying to the Peruvian stronghold. There, he places the child in the arms of Cora and dies.
Sheridan overall follows the basic storyline of the original German Pizarro. However, he softens the character of Elvira to be a high-minded, yet low-fallen heroine. Sheridan also omits the long-winded opening scene and Elvira emerges as a woman with no illusions, taking her passion for Pizarro for what it is but at the same time maintaining her view of the ideal hero and conqueror that Pizarro still has it in him to be. In Act II, Sheridan heightens the heroism of Rolla. He combines a strong instinct for friendship with a sense of unfruitful virtuous love. The last scene is brief yet fiery over the debate of a truly noble man.
The Cenci
A representative work that is considered by scholars to be the best and richest example of poetic drama of the Romantic age is The Cenci. Human innocence in Romantic drama joins with the blameless hero best by calamity with a new notion of the relationship between art and life. The Cenci is a drama influenced by Sophoclean and Euripidean tragedies with a touch of Elizabethan richness in imagery or a drama with the idea of Aristotelian pity and terror with a mix of Italianate five-act structure. The play associates Christian stoicism with idiosyncratic Platonism with concepts of Zoroastrain religious thought. Two also important influences include La Cenci by Guido and the style of Eliza O'Neill, who made a deep impression on Shelley.
The play begins with an introduction to Count Cenci and exposes to the audience his evil deeds. Next, there is a description of Beatrice Cenci, who is a living contradiction. Beatrice is elegant and gentle yet she is tortured by circumstance that causes her to be violent. She is persecuted by the Count and can turn to no one but the priest, Orsino. There is a banquet and there, the Count hints at the death of Beatrice's brothers. As a kind of innocent Lady Macbeth, Beatrice begs the noble guests to not leave and pleads them to rescue her. In Act II, Shelley builds an even higher pitch in Beatrice's agony at the abominable fate. The Count finds her and she tries to escape. In Act III, Beatrice makes an oath of vengeance and the entire act is a prepares audiences for the murder of Count Cenci. She commits a crime whimsically and murders the Count in Act IV. Here, Shelley presents two Beatrices, one in a life outside the storybook, and one in the play whose nature derives from the act she commits under extraordinary duress. This is radical innocence, for the crime she commits seems to be a separate matter to her character and self. The two remaining scenes set in prison where she is trailed. In the production of The Cenci , there was sympathy or Beatrice, which first overwhelmed audiences, yet soon became the highlight of the term radical innocence.
Sources:
Donohue, Joseph W. Jr. Dramatic Character in the English Romantic Age. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970
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