Romanticism

Romanticism is a very broad term, one more indicative of a direction of thought than of anything that could be termed a school or belief system. The Romantic Movement begins in the 18th. Century in Germany, in the 18th. Century with Rousseau in France, and in the late 18th. Century in England. Historian Jacques Barzun characterizes Romanticism as a reaction, not against Reason (that near-God of the Enlightenment) but against the "cold" intellect (intellect divorced …

…sublime is defined as that which is awesome; that which overpowers the senses and the emotions; that which one simultaneously is scared to death of and deeply attracted to. I think we will find many (never all) of those elements in much of the art and much of the thought we term Romantic. And I believe that list provides us with a sense of the differences between Romantic poetry and the neo-Classical poetry which precede