How simple is Romanticism?

After awhile when righting about the period of Romanticism you ask what more can you say about it? It isn't as big of a topic as some of the others however it still contributed to this era.  In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein things as simple as the monsters reaction to the sound of  the singing birds or it's relationship to nature was a part of romanticism. Funny how while writing this I started thinking what made the monster a male and not female? We know what makes human a male or female but  what happens in this case? Anyway that's a different story but as for the early century romanticism it could be seen in almost anything if really looked for.

Folklore

The romantic era didn't just pop out of the blue, but evolved from democratic ideologies of the age of revolution and folklore legends.  The reason people believe this is that songs and legends have been left behind showing us what was written and developed.  Though due to the folk movement it became a common language for humans to shine through out the era.
info:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/icon/romanticism.html

Seeing the Gothic Hidden in Romance

Just hearing the word Romance era the immediate feeling is love and bliss. Though its not just romance and love. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein there aren't just relationships of passion and romance, but even deeper relationships between life and death. After Dr. Frankenstein runs from the creature he lays on his bed and closes his eyes and dreams of Elizabeth. During Dr. Frankensteins dream he says, "I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death;" He continues to explain what he saw what happened through vivd details and how she changed. Theres a an element of imagination of people wondering what happened to her and how could someone he love die. Mary Shelley portayed the gothic element into romance and showed how to not only make something so romantic and blissful, but instead to give it this horrifying dark twist.
Info gathered from:
Chapter 4 volume 1

The Gothic Romance

Thanks to the Romantic era gothic romance came to play. The first person to play with this idea was author Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto." The setting of the book took place in a haunted castle which contains various and intensifying appearances of apparitions. The writings soon started to spread around the world to Eugene Sue from france to Edgar Allen Poe in the united states. During this movement during the romantic era many people rejected the enlightenment idea between balance and rationalism. Many of the readers anticipated the hysterical, mystical and horrified passionate adventures of the heros and heroines. The modern horror novels and women's romance novels both derived from Gothic Romance.
Info. gathered from:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html

Frankenstein intertwined with Romanticism

When reading Frankenstien you can see that elements from the romantic era are brought into it. Especially how how the author Mary Shelley uses the imagination through out the book. One particular part in Frankenstein were he starts describe the creature to us. Dr. Frankenstein says, "His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustours black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips." Were seeing the vision that Dr. Frankenstein is seeing with creating this monster. Mary Shelley could have simplistictacly put how the creature looked disfigured and horrifing, but instead she let the imagination come to life giving us a vision of exactly what the creature looked like.
Info gathered from:
Chapter 4 Volume 1

The Start of Romanticism

The Romantic era led to many remarkable things. It first started in England and Germany in 1770, but soon during the 1820's it became widespread through out Europe. The era transformed everything from writing to imagination. Thanks to the Grimm brothers Jakob and Wilhelm who were from Germany collected famous fairytales from towns. Another scholar Johann Gottfried studied folk songs and in England Joseph Addison and Richard Steele treated very old ballads as if they were high poetry. The beginnings of romanticism started with these scholars who began the movement to change europe.
info gathered from:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html

Romanticism ! Artistic, literary or intellectual movement ?

Romanticism was also called the (romantic era). Many argue that this eraumma was Artistic, literary or intellectual but was it really? First to give you a brief overview of this time... Romanticism originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and became dominate in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Though It may be argued that Music, art and books or literature may have externalize Romanticism and though I agree to a certain extent. I believe that we can never really say what really embodied the era of romanticism. There may be journals and movies or recordings and even text books we werent there in that time. I believe that everyones can go on the same journey but the experience for all of us will be different. Shelley explained many things through her lens and created Frankenstein in the image she wanted to portray as she did with the monster but no matter how many people read this book we will all have a different interpretaion. Artistic, literary, Intellectual? Maybe , but I'm sure thats not all of it.

academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Definition of Romanticism.

Romanticism is a mix of beliefs about art and life--sometimes called a "philosophical movement"-- that started to become popular, especially in England and Germany, around the late 1700's. Both the American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions happened around then--so change was in the air.

Romantics generally believed:

1) that imagination was the greatest thing a human was capable of (as opposed to reason)

2) in addition to imagination, a human's ability to feel and express emotion was also very, very important, and both emotion and imagination were necessary for great art

3) that nature could be a healing power, a safe escape from society, or the subject of art, and was best described in sensual, emotional language. (While the rationalist/Enlightenment view of nature was scientific--nature could best be described as a system of mechanical laws.)

4) that the interior journey of the self was very important.

(Source: Brooklyn College)