Talk:Romanticism

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From someone whose world history education has been minimum, this article has been useful without being overwhelming. You articulate the lack of consensus of use the term and its application, which is a valuable aspect of the article. It would take a book to try to express how cultural changes are felt among different art forms, countries and classes; and then it would still be speculative. Good work editorsArodb 02:20, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

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"It followed the Enlightenment period and was in part inspired by a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms from the previous period, as well as seeing itself as the fulfillment of the promise of that age."

I'm sure many, including plenty of history professors, would disagree with this statement, considering how many expressions of this genre have glorifed existing social orders. I think this should be revised.

As for the question about are Austrians "German", we must think of how these people reasoned in the 18th century. "Germany" was not a nation state. A German nation state did not exist until 1918, after the Prussian dominated German Empire was defeated. People living in Austria, Bohemia, Bavaria, Prussian, etc all thought of themselves as German. --Semyonkotko 09:07, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

The general point is fine, but there has been a German nation-state since 1871. It took perhaps twenty years to achieve internal cohesion, but to date it as late as 1918 doesn't make sense. Does anyone seriously think that a ramshackle state could have fought so effectively in World War I? Moreover, Prussia remained the dominant German state long after 1918. -- Norvo 23:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Why not investigate the Romantic concept of the "natural aristocrat" instead? --Wetman 20:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Because of the controversy over the definition of 'romanticism' and such, shouldn't we have an intro that lists aspects often associated with it, along with the era?D prime 04:08, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

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One of the professors at Illinois State University in the US has advanced the idea that Phillis Wheately should be credited as being one of the founders of the Romantic movement in poetry. I don't know how widespread this view is; I mention it in case it should deserve inclusion. -- April

I'm not quite sure on what this might be based. Wheately was writing about 50- 75 years before the American Romantics and her poetry reflects themes such as religion in a decidedly un-romantic way. I would contrast her famous "On Being Brought from Africa to America" which views slavery as a salvation from her "pagan land" to something like Blake's "Garden of Love" which views religion itself as an enslaving force.--68.38.223.84 02:39, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there a set of American poets and novelists considered to be romantic, too? --firepink

Sure, lots of them. The Transendentalists were considered early romantics. Poe is generally considered a Romantic. Some scholars group people like Poe and Hawthorne who focus on the dark side inherent in human nature into a sub-category of Romanticism known as "Anti-Transendentalism."

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The German musical tradition of the 19th Century is typically labelled 'Romantic', including the work of Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler.

Should we be worried about the fact that Schubert and Mahler were both Austrian? I mean, they were German speaking (though Mahler was originally from Bohemia), is that good enough? Anyway, I've replaced Schubert with a real German, Schumann, and removed Mahler (who did most of his work in the 20th century anyway). --Camembert

Until the Seven Weeks' War of 1866, the distinction between German and Austrian was largely meaningless. comments above. Norvo 23:23, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Tom Lehrer has ruined Mahler for me. I can't see the name without this running in my head: http://www.lyrics.net.ua/song/30468 -- Tarquin 14:41 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)

Heh, not heard that one. I'll write an article on Alma one day - she was indeed a, erm, generous woman. --Camembert

I've added more specifics in the Romantic music para.: dates, individual "Romantic" works User:Wetman.

Let's not get too carried away on music here - we probably want to avoid too much duplication with Romantic music. --Camembert

I have just made a page for Romantic ballet, but I don't know where would be a good place to link to it on the Romanticism page. What do people think? mary 23:20, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Word Origin

Did it originate from the word Rome? 205.174.22.28 00:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Copyvio in Characteristics

Anonymous user 67.101.159.101 has removed two paragraphs from the '(Characteristics)' section for being copyright violations of http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article?tocId=9377134&;query=Romanticism

This certainly seems to be true of the second para. Not so sure about the first.

Either way, it was a small portion of the article, so I have removed the copyvio notice and replaced it with this discussion. -- Solipsist 14:34, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good. The plagiarized paragraphs were serving an important function in this article, though: it needs some kind of introductory cartoon sketch of what "Romanticism" should mean for a general reader, even if too reductive to bear further scrutiny. Let's try to write such a section that isn't stolen. -- Rbellin 18:08, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

editing for readability

An anonymous user has been making significant edits to the page. To take one example:

Generally, Romanticism is the group of related philosophical and artistic, social and political trends arising from the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries in Europe; Romanticism's precise characterization and specific description were subjects of intellectual history and literary history for all the twentieth century, to date, studied without definitive consensus.

I applaud the desire to improve readability, but not at the cost of accuracy. For example, "Generally" describes the frequency of use, not the broadest meaning of the term. Early the same editor changed "the position of the aristocracy" to the "aristocracy's position", which begs the question "on what"? Before making such a thorough going set of changes, it is probably better to enter in some discussion, as at least one frequent editor of this page strongly disagrees with both the style and content of the changes that were made. Stirling Newberry 03:30, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your revert; the rewording in edits such as this one reduced readability and distorted the meaning of some of the article (and even rendered some of it incomprehensible). There's no reason to keep such changes. (I agree with some of the small stylistic changes like spelling out "nineteenth-century", but not with most of them.) For what it's worth, I'm not an expert on the Schlegels (though I've read some of both) and I am not convinced by the additional material alleging their Romanticism was primarily Christian. I'd like to see a citation for that before introducing it into the article again. -- Rbellin|Talk 04:54, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think we can put in a more nuanced reading, Schlegel's departure from neo-classicism and towards christianity passed through many stages, finally coming to rest in Catholicism. His embrace of the infinite found root in Schiller's conception of the divine. Stirling Newberry 05:27, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A useful disambiguating notice?

the disambiguaring notice {{For|other uses|Romance}} at the head of the page was removed, with the comment "this is not what disambiguation lines are for". What does the Wikipedia reader need? Was this notice actually helpful to the user? --Wetman 15:47, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

New nav template

I updated the Romanticism nav template. It's at: Template:Romanticism. Appears as:

. I tried to match the Template:Modernism as closely as possible, but there's very few stand-alone articles on Romanticism poetry/music/art. As opposed to the Modernism section, most articles on Romanticism are simply about individuals themselves. Nonetheless, I think it works pretty well.

Also, I wasn't quite sure whether to put that Victorianism or Modernism followed Romanticism. The Modernism template says it is preceded by Romanticism, so I just put both.

Thoughts? :) --Wolf530 23:59, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

deletions

Going through the edit history for this article, I notice a series of anonymous deletions which appears to be unjustified and undiscussed. Some of this material seems useful. Does anyone want to restore it? -- Rbellin|Talk 16:11, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Good call! I've restored the Romanticism in music text that was deleted wholesale by Anon. User:205.188.116.195. This need to be more carefully concentrated, as a distillation of the main article, Romantic music, rather than entirely deleted. Are there other unrestored Anon. deletions? --Wetman 18:07, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

- The order is Romanticism, Victorianism, and Modernism.

"American" ou "US" ?

In the lists of romantic persons, "American romanticism" title is used and may reflects once more and inadequate use of the word : Is that South American ? Native American ? North American ? It seems to be simply the common while deplorable semantic mistake between US and America... There must be a policy guide somewhere on that topic, but... I'm no pit worker... gbog 08:46, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

From Use of the word American:

In adjectival use, it is generally understood to mean "of or relating to the United States of America"; for example, "Elvis Presley was an American singer" or "the American president gave a speech today;" in noun form, it generally means U.S. citizen or national.

U.S. national in other languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, popular Portuguese and Russian speakers may use American (Japanese: アメリカ人 roma-ji: amerika-jin), (Russian: американец, американка,) (Mandarin Chinese: pinyin- měiguórén, traditional- 美國人, simplified- 美国人) to refer to U.S. citizens. These languages generally have other terms for U.S. nationals; for example, there is U.S. Amerikaner in German, étatsunien in French, or statunitense in Italian.

As I understand it, there's a lot of debate going on that page over the use of the word, but that's how it stands now. Irish♣Pearl 18:02, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Nietzsche the Romantic?

You will find sources that argue that Nietzsche had a period of Romantic influence, but those aren't credited in the current Nietzsche article. It would seem reasonable to discuss the issue in the context of that entry and make edits here only after the point has been agreed and substantiated there. Buffyg 15:59, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I suppose, but it seems fairly straightforward: The Birth of Tragedy, his first book, was clearly Romantic in its influences; later work less so. Chick Bowen 21:33, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

merge with Romance (genre)?

Someone added merge tags to this page and Romance (genre), the article on the medieval genre of romance (ancestor of the novel). There's been no explanation of this request, and it makes little sense to me, since the topics (a kind of medieval adventure story and a late-18th-century intellectual and artistic movement) seem quite distinct. Therefore, I'm removing the merge tags for now. Discussion is welcome. -- Rbellin|Talk 15:37, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• I looked at it and it seemed to me that the genre could move into the literature section here. However, I have no strong feelings on it, and little knowledge of the subject. Pretty much I just do vandalism protection of the article. Wikibofh 15:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

"In Germany and France, Herder praised the Aurora borealis."

Up until 2005-12-24, the article contained the amusingly absurd sentence above. I've restored the article to the original text ("[...] Herder praised the theater of Shakespeare [...]"), but for posterity, here (as far as i can tell) is the unlikely chain of events that resulted in it:

[1] deleted random chunks of text from the article, leaving the text "Herder praised the://aurora." (with "://aurora" being a remnant of the hostname of a URL further down the article). The vandalism went uncorrected. Some time later, [2] helpfully removed the errant punctuation before "aurora", and then (while reverting unrelated vandalism) [3] expanded "aurora" into the proper, linked term.

--Piet Delport 21:52, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Robert Burns

surely Robert Burns deserves a mention in this article? although considered "Proto-Romantic" I would have thought that this would still mean he would qualify for a place in this article?

Picture caption

The picture of Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott is of course Romantic in theme and subject, but it Waterhouse is generally considered to be a Pre-Raphaelite artist. Should this be noted in the caption? 24.4.112.227 20:37, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Waterhouse reveals himself in the actual painting to be a Romantic Realist in this particular instance. The image illustrates several aspects of Romanticism. Perhaps "pre-Raphaelite" doesn't fully describe Waterhouse.--Wetman 20:40, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Potential vandalism of this article?

"In art and literature, 'Romanticism' typically refers to the way cheeseburgers are made in Switzerland, jerk."

Just flagging this one for the author to correct or remove?

Of course vandalism. I have reverted it. You can do so yourself by looking at previous revisions from the "history" tag and then editing an earlier revision and saving it again. See Help:Reverting. Kusma (討論) 16:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

"Inside your mother"...?

Maybe someone wants to fix this. :S

Other meanings for romance

I was looking for "romanticism"/"romance" in terms of having romantic ideals and attitudes (not necessarily Romantic love, though), but all I get are stuff about art styles and movements. Anybody want to create something about romance as a state of mind or something? Comrade-HW 04:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Nothing for you at Romance (genre), Courtly love, Idealism, Ivory Tower, Tovarich? --Wetman 06:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

You might try searching for "utopia" and "utopianism", too.

-- Norvo 20:53, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Improving this article?

This looks like a very nice article, and I'd like to nominate it for Version 0.5, but unfortunately the lack of references would prevent it going through. Could the folks who contributed a lot to this article put in their sources? Maybe they could then nominate it for Version 0.5 and also at WP:GAN? Thanks, Walkerma 04:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Evolution influenced Romanticism??

"It [Romanticism] was influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment, particularly evolution and uniformitarianism, which argued that..."

How can this be? Evolution was put forth by Charles Darwin mid-19th century, how could evolution have influenced Romanticism, which developed in the mid-18th century?

Thanks.(anonymous)

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You are incorrect - the concept of evolution predates Darwin by quite a bit, and Romantics such as Goethe believed in it. What Darwin did was provide a comprehensive theory for how evolution occured - by natural and sexual selection - and that all biological change could be attributed to this one process. Stirling Newberry 01:51, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

A better characterisation of Counter-Enlightenment than this?

"Some modernist writers argue that Romanticism represents an aspect of the Counter-Enlightenment, a negatively charged phrase used to label movements or ideas seen by them as counter to the rationality and objectivity of the Enlightenment, instead promoting emotionalism, superstition and instability."

This is trashy writing, in that it brings up this suggestive connection only in order to crudely caricature the idea of Counter-Enlightenment and knock it down as a straw man. Can anyone provide a paragraph on the relationship of Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment that is less cheap? --Wetman 01:11, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you about the poor quality of this passage. I'll take a crack at a slight improvement, but a more fleshed-out version will have to wait for a more informed editor. -- Rbellin|Talk 04:42, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Quote

I need to find a poem that begins with the lines "my true love hath my heart and I have his by just exchange one for another given. thanks jmarr

It's a "romantic" thought, perhaps, but it's the opening of a sonnet by Shakespeare's older contemporary Sir Philip Sydney, built on an elaborate conceit constructed from the idea of eye-beams: see complete text. (Wetman 05:30, 8 December 2006 (UTC))

Art in the era of Romanticism

Right from the beginning I would like to credit my source Dr. George Rodetis, professor of Art History at Sonoma State University, whose lectures on Romanticism I attended and whose ph.d discertation on the french 19th c. romantic painter Eugene Delacroix I had the pleasure of reading, for the following information: of the romantic movement in Western art, literature, and music, and I purposefully included all three- art, music, and literature together because perhaps more than any other era, writers, musician and artists were cross-pollinating ideas and inspiring one another, for example Delacroix painting scenes from Faust, by the greatest of the romantic writers Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. When young Goethe explored the great Cathedral at Cologne and proposed in an essay that the greatest of the gothic architecture was every way equal and perhaps surpassed the beauty of the classically designed architecture of antiquity and the Renaissance, this sprang the Gothic novels later, such as Northanger Abbey, etc. Delacroix, too loved Shakespeare, and painted scenes from Shakespears plays, for Shakespeare was in this era a revelation to all, and all like Voltaire compared Shakespeare, whose works being newly translated into french, with Racine, and found Shakespeare more violent, emotional, and yet greater than the classically inspired Racine. In many, many ways Shakespeare in every sinew and fiber of his plays anticipated what in Western history we call the Romantic movement. Mark Faraday 04:48, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

image problem

is the first painting a reflected image? i'm actually looking at a copy of 'Traveler over a Sea of Fog' in a history textbook (A History of Western Society---McKay, Hill, Buckler), and the man is turned towards the right, not left.

Suggestion

You might add John Martin to your list of Romantic painters, as well as Caspar David Friedrich.

Antonio Giusti 04:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)Antonio Giusti

music

The last paragraph in th "romanticism in music" section seems to be original research or at least does not cite anything. I have put the SectOR template on it. 128.174.253.233 00:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Definition of "romantic"

"The name "romantic" itself comes from the term "romance" which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature."

This doesn't make much sense. You can't define a word with the word itself. So what characterizes "romantic literature"? Sladek 22:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

presumably he/she was trying to give something of an etymology, rather than a definition... It is probably important that this term "romantic" comes from a specific genre of text from an early era.

Shortcomings

I think this article needs to include - or give more attention to - criticisms of the ideas of this period & an examination of some of its excesses. Nazism is suggested, but not directly confronted. There also is no mention of Hegel, nor Nietzsche --JimWae 23:37, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism in this article

in the first paragraph on the "Characteristics" section. Please, remove!

Romantic Epistemology

The article currently states that Romantics argued "for an epistemology based on usage and custom."

Unfortunately, this seems patently wrong to me. Romantic epistemology (which is, loosely speaking, an account of where knowledge comes from) emphasizes intuition, feeling, and a deep spiritual connection with inner essences, which contrasts sharply with Enlightenment epistemology based on reasoning. Very importantly, the romantics thought all these sources of knowledge were deeply natural. The idea of usage and custom doesn't really get emphasized until postmodernism, and is really quite opposed to Romantic ideals (although distantly related in that it's anti-Enlightenment).

Usage and custom were seen as outgrowths of the conditioning of a people by the nature of their place. See Goethe on the failures of Josephine Austria for an example. But it could use a rewrite, as it overemphasizes one facet of a larger concept. Stirling Newberry 01:54, 19 March 2007 (UTC)