Characteristics of Romanticism
This new age brought with it a new way of thought:Romanticism. Challenging the old views from the Enlightenment in which all truth was discovered by reasoning, romanticism proposed that the chief method of discovering the truth was through ones emotions, feelings, and imagination. They went about adding to the old forms of art based on this idea. For instance, the romanticistic writer stopped writing about great heroic epics, and began telling stories of average men and women in which the central figure is rejected by society for their actions or ideas. The romanticist also believed that an emotion could only be experiecned by those who have had them. Along with this, they held a strong belief in 'individualism', or uniquness of each person. Thus, they supported rebellion against the middle class and wore strange clothing and long hair so as to stand out. With this grew a strong interest in the past, and a revival of Gothic architecture as well as a love for the exotic and unfamiliar. They were also drawn to poetry, in particular natural poetry, and believed that science merely reduced what nature showed in poetry and made it cold. Along with poetry, they held music in high esteem, particularly the music of Beehtoven
, and claimed that music allowed the composer to probe into the human soul. All in all, they were much like the youth movements of the 1960s.
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