Translator and prominent Romantic August Wilhelm Schlegel argued in his Lectures on Dramatic Arts and Letters that the most phenomenal power of human nature is its capacity to divide and diverge into opposite directions. This idea is often called "romantic originality". The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own original work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism, and to be derivative was the worst sin. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creator's own imagination, so that originality was essential. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were natural laws the imagination-at least of a good creative artist-would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. To express these feelings, it was considered that content of art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules dictating what a work should consist of. For William Wordsworth, poetry should begin as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then "recollect in tranquility", evoking a new but corresponding emotion the poet can then mold into art. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich, "the artist's feeling is his law".
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The nature of Romanticism may be approached from the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist.
In contrast to the Rationalism and Classicism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived as authentically medieval in an attempt to escape population growth, early urban sprawl, and industrialism.Īlthough the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which preferred intuition and emotion to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the events and ideologies of the French Revolution were also proximate factors since many of the early Romantics were cultural revolutionaries and sympathetic to the revolution. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, but also spontaneity as a desirable characteristic (as in the musical impromptu). The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as fear, horror and terror, and awe - especially that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublime and beauty of nature. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing conservatism, liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, chess, social sciences, and the natural sciences. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature-all components of modernity. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical.
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850.