Romanticism

n. style of art and literature that originated during the late 18th and early 19th centuries (focused on emotion, nature, freedom, and personal introspection)

"Romantics" redirects here. For the band, see The Romantics. Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the middle of the 18th century in Western Europe, during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature. It stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature. It elevated folk art, nature and custom, as well as arguing for an epistemology based on nature, which included human activity conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage. It was influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment and elevated medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. The name "romantic" itself comes from the term "romance" which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature. The ideologies and events of the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution are thought to have influenced the movement. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability in the representation of its ideas.
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Noun
1. impractical romantic ideals and attitudes
(hypernym) idealism
2. a movement in literature and art during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that celebrated nature rather than civilization; "romanticism valued imagination and emotion over rationality"
(antonym) classicism
(hypernym) humanistic discipline, humanities, liberal arts, arts
3. an exciting and mysterious quality (as of a heroic time or adventure)
(synonym) romance
(hypernym) quality
(hyponym) stardust

(n.)
A fondness for romantic characteristics or peculiarities; specifically, in modern literature, an aiming at romantic effects; -- applied to the productions of a school of writers who sought to revive certain medi/val forms and methods in opposition to the so-called classical style.
  

1790 - 1850 european movement of the revolutionary era, coexisting with neo classicism - emotional subjects - featuring nostalgia, tradition, passion, heroism and mysticism - compare Hudson river school 

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