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Romanticism And Its Influence On Our Own Era

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Romanticism was a specific, complex, widespread movement in thought and culture. It continues to have a huge influence on our own era’s poetry, novels, songs, films and sometimes our entire philosophy of what life is about. This kind of Romantic is always written with a capital “R”- don’t confuse it with the the narrower, Hollywood style, small ’r’ idea of romantic” that means related to being in love! Romantic (capital ‘R’) thoughts and values are something different and further-reaching.

Romanticism originated in the late Eighteenth Century (1700s) in Western Europe. In part, it was a reaction against the Industrial Revolution, and certainly Romanticism developed and strengthened over this period of enormous industrial development. …show more content…

None of these poet’s can simply be unified by one distinctive Romantic characteristic- but they can all be seen to manifest certain Romantic qualities.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Wordsworth
In English literature, Wordsworth and his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were pioneers in the development of the Romantic Movement, or romanticism, a movement that championed imagination and emotions as more powerful than reason and systematic thinking. “What I feel about a person or thing,” a romantic poet might have said, “is more important than what scientific investigation, observation, and experience would say about that person or thing.” Intuition–that voice within that makes judgments and decisions without the aid of reason—was a guiding force to the romantic poet.
You don’t have to spend time looking through collections of Romanic poetry to realise just how much the natural world is a primary poetic subject for them. Coleridge described natural phenomena- like landscapes, weather, rocks, flowers, animals- with an accuracy and sensitivity that went beyond all earlier poetic movements in terms of it’s passionate yet subtle detail. Nature serves as a stimulus for the most characteristic human activity, which the Romantics dedicated themselves to: personal thinking and feeling. A great deal of poetry of this period manifests a strong supernatural

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