Clair Fuller
Laurel Kitada
Alex Tranquada
Jodi Shou
Period 4
AP Lit
Asher
Romanticism Synthesis
Romanticism developed as a response to the sociopolitical standards of the Enlightenment Era and against the development of cold reason and science in that same era. Romanticism sought to discover and reveal the emotion in man’s appreciation of aesthetic beauty and drew on nature images and supernaturalism to convey that emotion. It strongly reflected the Renaissance, yet presented a completely antithetical view by focusing on religious influence by on secular perception.
During this period, choral music, traditionally a religious genre, shifted into a secular genre due to rising patriotism and interest in folk music. Opera composer Carl Maria von Weber used German folk stories rather than religious stories as the basis for many of his works, and other operas drew from the medieval romantic epics that told of heroism and valor. Writers such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Ralph Waldo Emerson looked to Greek writing and philosophy, adopting the view that inspiration did not have structure; it was irrational and unpredictable.
Notable painters Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church demonstrated Romantic sentiment in their depictions of ancient ruins, connoting the distinctly Romantic themes of ruin and death. While the more religious color of previous artistic and literary eras might have used these images to suggest a higher destiny for man after death, but the Romantic artists illustrated the idea that time and nature would inevitably overwhelm man, and that humanity was transient. Other painters like Alfred Bierstadt visualized people coexisting peacefully in nature, like his famous paintings of the “noble savages” that were Native American. In Romantic art, the highest reverence described was not God or even Man, but Nature or Emotion.
wyl.p1.t4 Romantic Era Response:
ReplyDeleteYour blog depicts several great factors of Romanticism.Contextualizing the sociopolitical landscape you offer perspective to view the artistic expression. The late 1700s to mid-1800 were identified by a rising sense of rebellion- in human thought and development and the manifestation of the will of the common man. Another defining characteristic is the rejection of the Rational Reasoning of the Enlightenment: defying structure, form, and convention.
You aptly point to the Romantic artist’s emotional response, artistic expression, and aesthetic interpretation that were elevated to a position of supreme importance. Subjectivism is characteristic of the art of the time,& was also present in that the works were not related to religious institutions but were secular. The Catholic Church had been cut by Protestantism and other religions as well as by monarchs jockeying for power. But, unlike Renaissance artists, there was no papal authority directing morality, philosophy, or the art for a Romantic Era of Europe. As well,in French Revolution 1789- 1794) leaders who disavow blind faith in God and religious expression ordered “dechristianization” part of the terrorization of the anti-revolutionary clergy. For the Romantics who followed, their religious impulses weren’t abandoned but the institutions of religions were rejected. Catholicism continued to vie for power resorting to terrorism carried out by the Inquisition until about 1850. So, in rebellion, some rejected religion, others expressed religious impulses in rebellion against the Enlightenment philosophy so religion was revived by some.
You interestingly illustrate the evolution of the genre of religious choral music into folk music, in tales of the common man rising into heroism and patriotism, and that these themes are also used as subjects of new epic operas. This fact presages a new model of the common man. Transformed into the Byronic Romantic hero, he is darkly passionate, with an almost divine sensibility in expression and action.
Spirited independence mixed with this new sense of distinct nationalism, contrasted with the previous idea of universal connectedness, equality or the sameness of man, forwarded by Enlightenment philosophers. We traced this to Neoclassicism, which bridged the Enlightenment’s restraint of feelings and requirement for rational thinking, with the drama and beauty of decorative Rococo depictions.
The outcome was a newly evolving idea of man in the universe. In the Romantic paintings as you describe Nature is a character and the depiction of man in the world is striving toward but estranged by the great force of nature. He is driven to attempt to understand nature that was often above and indifferent to man. It could be described as the belief Panpsychism, the theory that nature has a psychic side. In artwork, you note, old structures rejected as requirement to frame expression. Interestingly, this was paralleled in the sociopolitical climate as the Ancien Régime was overthrown; the Romantic Era was also known as the Age of Revolutions.
Edward Tyler, Danny Shapiro, Claire West, Ivy Arbolado
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