Words: 858
Romanticism Paper When most people hear the word romanticism, the first thing that comes to mind is love and romance. The thought triggered is partially on the right track however the word “romanticism” actually stems from an actual era and movement that started in 1798 and ended in 1832. This era changed the way in which different artists and literatus expressed themselves and the way they viewed the world around them. Romanticism is evident in many forms like paintings, music, dance, literature, and poetry.
In this paper I will be describing to you the idealism of romanticism in these specific forms; literature, dance, and paintings. In this paper I will show you that romanticism is something that was set before our time and yet still very profound in this time. Romanticism concerning literature could be easily misled. The word itself could easily be correlated to novelist such as Danielle Steele and Margaret Mitchell, however, most people don’t know that even authors like Edgar Allan Poe falls under the class of romanticism in literature.
Some of the key elements in romantic literature were that they “Mainly cared about the individual, intuition, and imagination. ” (“Characteristics Of Romantic Literature,” n. d. ) In Poe’s short story “Ligea” he encompasses all of these ideals in this short piece of work. In the story he compares the lives of both of his wives that passed away. The first one he describes beautiful beyond the unknown, and his second wife as just a typical mold. This was his way of showing how things should not be made to societies speculations, but built molded to the individual’s intuition and desires.
The narrator is also described as a drug addict that does not know certain key facts like; date, time, and location. Through this he was also able to get the reader to become lost in time, which in return triggers the imagination of the readers to come up with their own ideas on the story. Pieces of work like “Ligea” is good example of what romantic literature is about. The basic concept of encompassing individual elements also reflected in different forms of art as well, such as ballet.
Romanticism when concerning dancing gives a much better perspective of root word romantic. The way the ballerinas move is fueled and driven by mood and feeling, making the movements seem so elegant, or romantic. Romanticism in ballet came about “after the fall of the Bourbon Monarchy in 1830. ” It was during this time that opera became privately owned and operated which, gave the Filippo Taglioni to showcase his work in the ballet, La Sylphide. It was this ballet in particular that started the domino effect of romanticism’s eminence to reflect in following ballets.
Out of this ballet came the rise of Marie Taglioni, the daughter of Filippo, she was the most famed ballerina during her time. She was also one of the pioneers in the Romantic Movement as she danced with such emotion and passion that broke away from the textbook teachings of dancing. The idealism of romanticism is evident in many forms, but the one that sticks out the most would have to paintings. As with all the other forms that were impacted by romanticism, art is the one that did not just impact art itself.
The idealism in paintings was not only a reflection of one’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Art, however, also caused the artist to paint about how they felt about others and the society around them. Romantic artists actually cared about what was going on around them. Eugene Delacroix was a romantic artist that used his artwork as a tool to encourage people to support Greek’s fight for independence from the Turks. The painting The Massacre at Chios gives off a tyrannical image of the Turks murdering Greeks to be sold as slaves.
This in turn won the vote of Europeans to feel for the Greeks, which led them to support their cause. This sense of romanticism is evident in all pieces of art. Nine times out of 10 you will hear out of an artist’s mouth ” I paint what I feel” in regards to their work. Through all three of these different art forms, it goes to show that it the Romantic era was mostly described as a time that people literally came out of their shell and started doing things in conjunction with their own personal feelings. In conclusion I discussed three different forms of art in which romantic idealism is present.
I talked about romantic literature, ballet, and paintings. Through comparing the three I concluded that they all share the common element of individual feelings. This caused the artist in their own respective form to break out of the basic mold and to be more creative and out of the box. It was the romantic era that started the domino effect that is still in motion until this very day. It paved the way for people to express themselves freely, and not to be confined and restricted to typical mold but to become a mold of their own.