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Modern Love

25 Modern Love Essays to Read if You Want to Laugh, Cringe and Cry

The popular column, which began in 2004, has become a podcast, a book and an Amazon Prime streaming series. Here are some of its greatest hits.

By Daniel Jones

Whether you’re new to Modern Love or a longtime fan, we think you’ll enjoy this collection of some of our most memorable essays. You’ll find some of our most read and most shared of all time, and others that really got readers talking (and tweeting, and sharing). We present, in no particular order, the quirky, the profound, the head scratching and the heartbreaking. (A handful of these essays and dozens more of our most memorable columns can also be found in the Modern Love anthology .)

To keep up on all things Modern Love — our weekly essays, podcast episodes and batches of Tiny Love Stories, along with other relationship-based reads from The Times — sign up for Love Letter , a weekly email. And check out the “Modern Love” television series , based on this column, on Amazon Prime Video.

1. No Sound, No Fury, No Marriage

By Laura Pritchett

After her peaceful marriage quietly dissolves, a woman comes to appreciate the vitality of conflict and confrontation.

2. Sometimes, It’s Not You, or the Math

By Sara Eckel

He didn’t care that I was 39 and hadn’t had a serious boyfriend in eight years.

3. Am I Gay or Straight? Maybe This Fun Quiz Will Tell Me

By Katie Heaney

A young woman seeks answers to her sexual orientation online, where the endless quizzes she takes deliver whatever label she wants.

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Feb 20, 2023

250-500 Word Example Essays About Love and Romance

Got an Essay assignment about Love and Romance? Let us help you out with these inspiring Examples!

Love, an emotion that has captivated the hearts and minds of poets, authors, and artists throughout history, remains a profound and multi-faceted subject. While the depth and complexity of this emotion can make it a daunting topic to explore in an essay, the right resources can turn this challenge into a rewarding endeavor. For those looking to capture the essence of love and romance in their writing, our essay writer can be a beacon of inspiration and assistance. This tool, powered by Jenni.ai, offers a seamless journey through the essay-writing process, from brainstorming ideas to refining the final draft. 

Whether you're delving into argumentative, persuasive , or reflective essays about love, Jenni.ai ensures clarity, coherence, and a touch of elegance in your prose. It's a trusted companion for students, educators, and seasoned writers alike, simplifying the writing journey every step of the way.

1. The Evolution of Love: A Study of the Changing Nature of Romance throughout History

Introduction.

Love is one of humanity's most complicated and mysterious emotions. People have strived to comprehend and define Love throughout history, resulting in many works of literature, art, and music dedicated to the subject. Despite its universal appeal, the nature of Love has evolved significantly throughout time, reflecting evolving cultural, social, and economic situations. In this essay, we will look at the evolution of Love, from ancient times to the present.

Ancient Love

A. Greek and Roman Love

Love was viewed as a complex and varied feeling in ancient Greece and Rome, comprising characteristics of desire, friendship, and awe. Love was frequently represented as a tremendous force in ancient civilizations, capable of both propelling individuals to high heights of success and bringing them down into the depths of sorrow. This was especially true of romantic Love, which was glorified in epic poems like the Iliad and Odyssey , as well as works of art and literature depicting the hardships and sufferings of star-crossed lovers.

B. Medieval Love

A chivalric code known as courtly Love emerged in medieval Europe. Its core tenants were the importance of Love, honour, and devotion. During this time, romantic Love was typically portrayed as an unrequited emotion, with the lover pining for the affections of a faraway and unreachable beloved. Medieval poets and troubadours mirrored this romanticised picture of Love in their works by singing and writing about the highs and lows of passionate Love.

Modern Love

A. The Renaissance

The idealized picture of Love that had ruled for centuries was called into question by artists and intellectuals during the Renaissance, marking a turning point in the development of romantic relationships. During this time, romantic Love was portrayed as more tactile and visceral. Shakespeare, for instance, reflected the shifting beliefs of his day by exploring the nuanced and often tragic nature of Love in his works.

B. The Enlightenment

The concepts of reason and individuality began to gain root during the Enlightenment, and with that came a shift in how people saw Love. Political marriages and alliances were often formed based on Love, which was now considered a more sensible and practical feeling. Thinkers from the Enlightenment period, including Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, shared this perspective on Love as a tool for bettering society and the individual.

C. The Modern Era

Today, the word "love" is most often used to describe a feeling one has when they are in a committed relationship or when one has achieved their own goals. Love has become a consumable good thanks to the spread of consumerism and the worship of the individual. The media and arts reflect this conception of Love by depicting it as a means to one's fulfillment and contentment.

The changing cultural, social, and economic conditions of each historical epoch are reflected in the history of Love. The essence of Love has changed dramatically throughout the years, from its idealised image in ancient Greece and Rome to its depiction as a spiritual tie in mediaeval Europe to its current identification with romantic relationships and personal fulfilment. Despite these changes, Love remains a strong and enduring force in human existence, inspiring numerous works of art, literature, and music and affecting how we live and interact with one another.

2. The Power of Love: Examining the Impact of Love on Our Lives and Relationships

Love is a strong feeling that may dramatically alter our life and the bonds we form with others. love, whether romantic, familial, or platonic, can unite us and improve our lives in countless ways., the benefits of love.

A. Improved Physical Health

Love has been demonstrated to improve physical health by decreasing stress, lowering blood pressure, and increasing immunity. The hormone oxytocin, which is released in response to social bonding and has been demonstrated to reduce physiological responses to stress, is thought to be at play here.

B. Enhanced Mental Health

In addition to its physical benefits, Love has been shown to have a beneficial effect on our mental health, lowering stress and anxiety levels and boosting our general sense of happiness. The protective powers of Love against the negative consequences of stress and other difficulties in life are well accepted.

C. Strengthened Relationships

A stronger tie may be formed between two people via the power of Love. Relationships of all kinds, whether romantic, familial, or platonic, may benefit from the strengthening effects of Love by increasing their levels of closeness, trust, and mutual understanding.

The Challenges of Love

A. Love can be painful

Sometimes Love hurts, as when a relationship ends or when we can't find the one we're looking for. One of life's most trying events is losing someone we care about, which may leave us feeling isolated, discouraged, and empty.

The Power of Love to Overcome Challenges

Despite these difficulties, Love may help us overcome them and grow closer to one another. The strength of Love is that it may help us learn and grow, both as people and as a community, via its many forms, such as forgiveness, compromise, and the willingness to persevere through adversity.

Finally, Love is a strong and transformational force that may profoundly influence our lives and relationships. Love may provide us joy, comfort, and a feeling of purpose, whether between friends, family, or romantic partners. Despite its numerous advantages, Love may also bring with it difficulties such as heartbreak and strife. Nonetheless, never underestimate the power of Love. 

It has the potential to draw people together and form deep, long-lasting bonds. Love has the power to make the world a better place, whether through acts of kindness, selflessness, or simply being there for one another. So, let us embrace Love in all of its manifestations and harness its potential to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

3. The Science of Love: Understanding the Biology and Psychology Behind Love and Attraction

For millennia, people have been drawn and intrigued by the intricate and intriguing feeling of Love. Despite its enormous global significance, the science of Love is now being thoroughly investigated. This paper will investigate the biology and psychology of Love and attraction, delving into the different elements that impact these powerful emotions and how they form our relationships.

The Biology of Love

A. Hormone Function

Love is a biological process controlled by chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. These hormones influence our sensations of attraction, enthusiasm, and enjoyment and boost sentiments of trust and closeness.

B. The Influence of Genetics

Genetics also has an impact on Love and attraction, with some personality qualities and physical characteristics that are considered to be appealing to potential spouses being handed down from generation to generation. This suggests that particular preferences for specific sorts of people are hardwired into our genetics, influencing our romantic and sexual attraction patterns.

The Psychology of Love

A. The Role of Attachment Styles

Our attachment types, which we acquire from our early connections with our caretakers, also affect our Love. These attachment types can significantly influence our later relationships, influencing how we build and keep deep attachments with others.

B. The Impact of Social Norms and Values

Cultural Values

Social conventions and cultural ideas also impact Love and attraction, with societal expectations and values impacting our romantic and sexual impulses. These social conventions and cultural ideas influence everything from who we are attracted to and how we approach and pursue relationships.

The Meeting of Biology and

Love Psychology

The biology and psychology of Love are inextricably linked and interdependent, with one having a complicated and subtle impact on the other. This suggests that, while biology influences our sentiments of attraction and Love, our psychological experiences and beliefs may equally shape these emotions.

To summarise, love science is a complicated and intriguing discipline that encompasses the biology and psychology of this strong and transformational emotion. By investigating the elements that impact Love and attraction, we may gain a deeper understanding of the systems that underpin these feelings and how they shape our lives and relationships. The study of Love is a vital and beneficial effort, whether we seek Love, attempt to preserve Love, or wonder about the science underlying this feeling.

4. The Fine Line Between Love and Obsession: Exploring the Dark Side of Love

Love is a powerful and transformative emotion that can bring immense joy and fulfilment to our lives. But Love can also turn dark and dangerous when it crosses the line into obsession. This essay will examine the fine line between Love and obsession, exploring how Love can become unhealthy and dangerous.

The Characteristics of Obsessive Love

A. Unhealthy Attachment

Obsessive Love is characterized by an unhealthy attachment to another person, with the obsessed person becoming overly dependent on their partner for emotional fulfilment. This can lead to feelings of possessiveness and jealousy, as well as a need for constant attention and validation.

B. Control and Manipulation

Obsessive Love can also involve control and manipulation, with the obsessed person trying to control every aspect of their partner's life and behaviour. This can range from minor acts of manipulation, such as trying to dictate what their partner wears or who they spend time with, to more serious forms of control, such as physical abuse or stalking.

The Dark Side of Love

A. Stalking and Harassment

The dark side of Love can take many forms, with stalking and harassment being among the most extreme and dangerous forms of obsessive behaviour. Stalking and harassment can have serious and long-lasting consequences for the victim, causing fear, stress, and trauma that can impact their mental and physical well-being.

B. Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is another form of the dark side of Love, with physical, sexual, and psychological abuse being used as a means of control and domination. Domestic violence can have devastating consequences for the victim, often leading to serious injury or even death.

The Roots of Obsessive Love

A. Psychological Issues

Obsessive Love can have its roots in psychological issues, including depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder. These conditions can lead to feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem, making it difficult for individuals to form healthy relationships.

B. Cultural and Social Factors

Cultural and social factors can also play a role in the development of obsessive Love, with certain societal beliefs and norms promoting possessiveness and control in relationships. This can include gender roles, expectations, and cultural beliefs about Love and relationships.

In conclusion, the fine line between Love and obsession is delicate and dangerous, with Love crossing over into unhealthy and dangerous territory when it becomes obsessive. By understanding the characteristics of obsessive Love and how it can take dark and dangerous forms, we can better protect ourselves and our loved ones from the negative consequences of this powerful emotion.

5. The Concept of Unconditional Love: An Analysis of the Ideal of Selfless Love

All kinds of different things count as Love since it's such a complicated and diverse feeling. Unconditional Love is frequently depicted as altruistic, all-encompassing, and unshakable, making it one of the most romanticized types. In this essay, I'd discuss the idea of unconditional Love, defining it and contrasting it with other types of affection.

An Explanation of Selfless Love

A. Selfless Love

The term "unconditional love" is commonly used to describe a type of Love that puts the other person's needs before its own. In this kind of Love, one person cares for another without any thought of return or compensation.

B. Love that encompasses everything

Many people use the term "all-encompassing" to express how unconditional Love embraces a person regardless of who they are or what they've done in their lives. A love like this doesn't depend on the other person changing or improving in any way; rather, it's an unconditional embrace of the person as they are.

The Ideal of Unconditional Love

A. Love Without Conditions

Unconditional Love is a romantic ideal in which the lover places no restrictions on the object of his affection. Since it involves so much giving of oneself, this kind of Love is typically held up as the pinnacle of romantic relationships.

B. Putting the Feeling into Action

However, since we are all flawed human beings, practising unconditional Love can be challenging in daily life. Although this may be the case, the ideal of unconditional Love is still significant since it motivates us to improve our Love and compassion towards others.

The Advantages of Unconditional Love

A. Stronger Connections

Unconditional Love has the potential to improve our connections with others, leading to deeper and more meaningful bonds. This kind of Love creates a non-judgmental and welcoming attitude towards people, which can assist to lessen conflict and improve understanding.

B. More Joy and Satisfaction

As a result of the more profound relationships it fosters, unconditional Love may also increase a person's sense of well-being and contentment. Finding Love like this may give our life new meaning and make us feel whole.

In conclusion, many of us hold unconditional Love as a relationship goal. Even if it's not always possible, the ideal of unconditional Love is worthwhile since it motivates us to increase our Love and compassion. The concept of unconditional Love may lead us to a more meaningful and happy lifestyle, whether our goal is to better our relationships or to find more pleasure and contentment in general.

6. The Importance of Communication in Love Relationships: A Study of the Role of Communication in Maintaining Love

Love relationships, like all others, benefit greatly from open lines of communication between partners. Connecting with one another on a regular basis, whether it's to chat about the day, express emotions, or problem-solve, is crucial to keeping the Love alive between you. This essay will discuss the significance of communication in romantic relationships, specifically how it helps couples stay together and grow closer over time.

Advantages of good communication

Increased Compatibility and Mutual Understanding

Love partnerships benefit significantly from open lines of communication that facilitate mutual understanding and closeness. Sharing our innermost ideas, emotions, and experiences with our partners via direct and honest communication strengthens our bonds with them.

Reduced Conflict

As we can better address difficulties and find positive solutions to differences when communicating effectively, we experience less conflict in our relationships. Relationships may be stronger and more loving by talking through differences and finding common ground.

The Difficulties in Expressing Your Feelings in a Romantic Relationship

A. Confusing Messages and Confused Intents

Good communication can sometimes be difficult, especially in romantic partnerships, despite its many advantages. Conflict, anger and a lack of trust may all result from poor communication and misunderstandings in relationships.

B. Vulnerability and Emotional Safety

Likewise, it takes courage and trust to open up and talk about your feelings with the person you love. It may be nerve-wracking to communicate our innermost thoughts and feelings with a partner because of the risk of being judged harshly or rejected.

The Importance of Active Listening

What is Active Listening?

Maintaining positive connections with others requires not just good talkers but also good listeners. Paying close attention to the other person as they speak and making an effort to get their viewpoint and requirements is an essential component of active listening.

The Benefits of Active Listening

The ability to listen attentively and process information can have a significant influence on interpersonal bonds. You may show your spouse how much you value their opinion and the commitment you have to the relationship by listening attentively to what they have to say.

Finally, it's important to note that communication is a cornerstone of successful, loving partnerships. Communication is crucial for developing and maintaining healthy relationships , whether it is via problem-solving, venting, or just listening. Your relationship may grow stronger and become more rewarding and loving if you put an emphasis on communicating well with one another.

Final Words

Love is a complicated and varied theme that has inspired numerous works of art, literature, and music. Whether it is the science of Love, the power of Love, or the development of Love, there is a great deal to learn and comprehend about this universal feeling. 

Students now have access to a potent tool that may assist them in writing essays about Love with ease and assurance thanks to Jenni.ai. From giving ideas and recommendations to leading you through the writing process, Jenni.ai is the ideal option for anyone who wants to write about Love and relationships. Why then wait? Sign up for a free trial of Jenni.ai today and explore its numerous writing perks!

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That actually explain what's on your next test, romantic essay, from class:, world literature ii.

A romantic essay is a form of literary expression that emphasizes emotion, individualism, and nature, often reflecting the ideals of the Romantic movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These essays typically explore personal experiences and thoughts, celebrating the beauty of the natural world while critiquing industrialization and societal norms. Through a subjective lens, romantic essays convey deep feelings and imaginative insights, bridging the gap between art and philosophy.

congrats on reading the definition of Romantic Essay . now let's actually learn it.

5 Must Know Facts For Your Next Test

• Romantic essays often feature personal reflections that reveal the author's inner thoughts and emotional responses to experiences or observations.
• Nature is a central theme in romantic essays, with writers using vivid imagery to evoke feelings of wonder and appreciation for the natural world.
• These essays frequently critique modernity and industrialization, expressing concern about its impact on humanity's spiritual connection to nature.
• Many notable Romantic writers, such as William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson, used essays as a medium to express their philosophical ideas and emotional depth.
• The romantic essay genre paved the way for later forms of personal writing, influencing modern memoirs and reflective literature.

Review Questions

• A romantic essay diverges from traditional essays by focusing more on personal emotion, subjective experience, and creative expression rather than strictly following logical arguments or formal structures. While traditional essays often prioritize clarity and reasoned discourse, romantic essays embrace a more fluid style that celebrates imagination and explores themes like nature, individualism, and emotional depth. This emphasis on personal insight allows romantic essays to connect with readers on an emotional level.
• Nature plays a pivotal role in romantic essays as it serves as both a backdrop for personal reflection and a symbol of deeper truths. Romantic writers often portray nature as a source of inspiration, beauty, and spiritual renewal. By emphasizing the importance of nature, these essays reflect key values of the Romantic movement, including the celebration of individual experience, emotional authenticity, and a critique of industrialization's alienating effects on human existence.
• The romantic essay has significantly shaped contemporary writing styles by introducing elements of personal narrative and emotional exploration into literary expression. Today's writers often incorporate introspection and vivid imagery inspired by nature into their works, mirroring the romantic tradition. Additionally, the focus on individual experience and authenticity resonates strongly in modern memoirs and personal essays. This lasting influence demonstrates how romantic essays have paved the way for ongoing conversations about identity, emotion, and humanity's relationship with the world.

Related terms

Romanticism : An artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe, emphasizing emotion, imagination, and the sublime aspects of nature, often as a reaction against the Enlightenment's focus on reason.

Nature Writing : A literary genre that focuses on the natural environment, highlighting its beauty and complexities while often reflecting on humanity's relationship with nature.

Transcendentalism : A philosophical movement in the early 19th century that arose in America, advocating for self-reliance, individual intuition, and a deep connection to nature as a source of truth.

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Before You Write a Love Essay, Read This to Get Examples

The day will come when you can’t escape the fate of all students: You will have to write a what is love essay.

No worries:

Here you’ll find tons of love essay topics and examples. No time to read everything? Scroll down to get a free PDF with original samples.

Definition: Essay on Love

First, let’s define what is love essay?

The most common topics are:

• Definition of love
• What is love?
• Meaning of love

Why limit yourself to these hackneyed, general themes? Below, I’ll show how to make your paper on love original yet relevant to the prompt you get from teachers.

Love Essay Topics: 20 Ideas to Choose for Your Paper

Your essay on love and relationship doesn’t have to be super official and unemotional. It’s ok to share reflections and personal opinions when writing about romance.

Often, students get a general task to write an essay on love. It means they can choose a theme and a title for their paper. If that’s your case,  feel free to try any of these love essay topics:

• Exploring the impact of love on individuals and relationships.
• Love in the digital age: Navigating romance in a tech world.
• Is there any essence and significance in unconditional love?
• Love as a universal language: Connecting hearts across cultures.
• Biochemistry of love: Exploring the process.
• Love vs. passion vs. obsession.
• How love helps cope with heartbreak and grief.
• The art of loving. How we breed intimacy and trust.
• The science behind attraction and attachment.
• How love and relationships shape our identity and help with self-discovery.
• Love and vulnerability: How to embrace emotional openness.
• Romance is more complex than most think: Passion, intimacy, and commitment explained.
• Love as empathy: Building sympathetic connections in a cruel world.
• Evolution of love. How people described it throughout history.
• The role of love in mental and emotional well-being.
• Love as a tool to look and find purpose in life.
• Welcoming diversity in relations through love and acceptance.
• Love vs. friendship: The intersection of platonic and romantic bonds.
• The choices we make and challenges we overcome for those we love.
• Love and forgiveness: How its power heals wounds and strengthens bonds.

Love Essay Examples: Choose Your Sample for Inspiration

Essays about love are usually standard, 5-paragraph papers students write in college:

• One paragraph is for an introduction, with a hook and a thesis statement
• Three are for a body, with arguments or descriptions
• One last passage is for a conclusion, with a thesis restatement and final thoughts

Below are the ready-made samples to consider. They’ll help you see what an essay about love with an introduction, body, and conclusion looks like.

What is love essay: 250 words

Lao Tzu once said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Indeed, love can transform individuals, relationships, and our world.

A word of immense depth and countless interpretations, love has always fascinated philosophers, poets, and ordinary individuals. This  emotion breaks boundaries and has a super power to change lives. But what is love, actually?

It’s a force we feel in countless ways. It is the warm embrace of a parent, filled with care and unwavering support. It is the gentle touch of a lover, sparking a flame that ignites passion and desire. Love is the kind words of a friend, offering solace and understanding in times of need. It is the selfless acts of compassion and empathy that bind humanity together.

Love is not confined to romantic relationships alone. It is found in the family bonds, the connections we forge with friends, and even the compassion we extend to strangers. Love is a thread that weaves through the fabric of our lives, enriching and nourishing our souls.

However, love is not without its complexities. It can be both euphoric and agonizing, uplifting and devastating. Love requires vulnerability, trust, and the willingness to embrace joy and pain. It is a delicate balance between passion and compassion, independence and interdependence.

Finally, the essence of love may be elusive to define with mere words. It is an experience that surpasses language and logic, encompassing a spectrum of emotions and actions. Love is a profound connection that unites us all, reminding us of our shared humanity and the capacity for boundless compassion.

What is love essay: 500 words

A 500-word essay on why I love you

Trying to encapsulate why I love you in a mere 500 words is impossible. My love for you goes beyond the confines of language, transcending words and dwelling in the realm of emotions, connections, and shared experiences. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to express the depth and breadth of my affection for you.

First and foremost, I love you for who you are. You possess a unique blend of qualities and characteristics that captivate my heart and mind. Your kindness and compassion touch the lives of those around you, and I am grateful to be the recipient of your unwavering care and understanding. Your intelligence and wit constantly challenge me to grow and learn, stimulating my mind and enriching our conversations. You have a beautiful spirit that radiates warmth and joy, and I am drawn to your vibrant energy.

I love the way you make me feel. When I am with you, I feel a sense of comfort and security that allows me to be my true self. Your presence envelops me in a cocoon of love and acceptance, where I can express my thoughts, fears, and dreams without fear of judgment. Your support and encouragement inspire me to pursue my passions and overcome obstacles. With you by my side, I feel empowered to face the world, knowing I have a partner who believes in me.

I love the memories we have created together. From the laughter-filled moments of shared adventures to the quiet and intimate conversations, every memory is etched in my heart. Whether exploring new places, indulging in our favorite activities, or simply enjoying each other’s company in comfortable silence, each experience reinforces our bond. Our shared memories serve as a foundation for our relationship, a testament to the depth of our connection and the love that binds us.

I love your quirks and imperfections. Your true essence shines through these unique aspects! Your little traits make me smile and remind me of the beautiful individual you are. I love how you wrinkle your nose when you laugh, become lost in thought when reading a book, and even sing off-key in the shower. These imperfections make you human, relatable, and utterly lovable.

I love the future we envision together. We support each other’s goals, cheering one another on as we navigate the path toward our dreams. The thought of building a life together, creating a home filled with love and shared experiences, fills my heart with anticipation and excitement. The future we imagine is one that I am eager to explore with you by my side.

In conclusion, the reasons why I love you are as vast and varied as the universe itself. It is a love that defies logic and surpasses the limitations of language. From the depths of my being, I love you for the person you are, the way you make me feel, the memories we cherish, your quirks and imperfections, and the future we envision together. My love for you is boundless, unconditional, and everlasting.

A 5-paragraph essay about love

I’ve gathered all the samples (and a few bonus ones) in one PDF. It’s free to download. So, you can keep it at hand when the time comes to write a love essay.

Ready to Write Your Essay About Love?

Now that you know the definition of a love essay and have many topic ideas, it’s time to write your A-worthy paper! Here go the steps:

• Check all the examples of what is love essay from this post.
• Choose the topic and angle that fits your prompt best.
• Write your original and inspiring story.

Any questions left? Our writers are all ears. Please don’t hesitate to ask!

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Romanticism in Literature: Definition and Examples

Finding beauty in nature and the common man.

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• B.A., English, Rutgers University

Romanticism was a literary movement that began in the late 18th century and ended around the middle of the 19th century—although its influence continues to this day. Marked by a focus on the individual (and the unique perspective of a person, often guided by irrational, emotional impulses), a respect for nature and the primitive, and a celebration of the common man, Romanticism can be seen as a reaction to the huge changes in society that occurred during this period, including the revolutions that burned through countries like France and the United States, ushering in grand experiments in democracy.

Key Takeaways: Romanticism in Literature

• Romanticism is a literary movement spanning roughly 1790–1850.
• The movement was characterized by a celebration of nature and the common man, a focus on individual experience, an idealization of women, and an embrace of isolation and melancholy.
• Prominent Romantic writers include John Keats, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley.

Romanticism Definition

The term Romanticism does not stem directly from the concept of love, but rather the French word romaunt (a romantic story told in verse). Romanticism focused on emotions and the inner life of the writer, and often used autobiographical material to inform the work or even provide a template for it, unlike traditional literature at the time.

Romanticism celebrated primitive and elevated "regular people" as being deserving of celebration, which was an innovation at the time. Romanticism also fixated on nature as a primordial force and encouraged the concept of isolation as necessary for spiritual and artistic development.

Characteristics of Romanticism

Romantic literature is marked by six primary characteristics: celebration of nature, focus on the individual and spirituality, celebration of isolation and melancholy, interest in the common man, idealization of women, and personification and pathetic fallacy.

Celebration of Nature

Romantic writers saw nature as a teacher and a source of infinite beauty. One of the most famous works of Romanticism is John Keats’ To Autumn (1820):

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,– While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

Keats personifies the season and follows its progression from the initial arrival after summer, through the harvest season, and finally to autumn’s end as winter takes its place.

Focus on the Individual and Spirituality

Romantic writers turned inward, valuing the individual experience above all else. This in turn led to a heightened sense of spirituality in Romantic work, and the addition of occult and supernatural elements.

The work of Edgar Allan Poe exemplifies this aspect of the movement; for example, The Raven tells the story of a man grieving for his dead love (an idealized woman in the Romantic tradition) when a seemingly sentient Raven arrives and torments him, which can be interpreted literally or seen as a manifestation of his mental instability.

Celebration of Isolation and Melancholy

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a very influential writer in Romanticism; his books of essays explored many of the themes of the literary movement and codified them. His 1841 essay Self-Reliance is a seminal work of Romantic writing in which he exhorts the value of looking inward and determining your own path, and relying on only your own resources.

Related to the insistence on isolation, melancholy is a key feature of many works of Romanticism, usually seen as a reaction to inevitable failure—writers wished to express the pure beauty they perceived and failure to do so adequately resulted in despair like the sort expressed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in A Lament :

O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb. Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more—Oh, never more!

Interest in the Common Man

William Wordsworth was one of the first poets to embrace the concept of writing that could be read, enjoyed, and understood by anyone. He eschewed overly stylized language and references to classical works in favor of emotional imagery conveyed in simple, elegant language, as in his most famous poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud :

I wandered lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o'er vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden Daffodils; Beside the Lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Idealization of Women

In works such as Poe’s The Raven , women were always presented as idealized love interests, pure and beautiful, but usually without anything else to offer. Ironically, the most notable novels of the period were written by women (Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Mary Shelley, for example), but had to be initially published under male pseudonyms because of these attitudes. Much Romantic literature is infused with the concept of women being perfect innocent beings to be adored, mourned, and respected—but never touched or relied upon.

Personification and Pathetic Fallacy

Romantic literature’s fixation on nature is characterized by the heavy use of both personification and pathetic fallacy. Mary Shelley used these techniques to great effect in Frankenstein :

Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.

Romanticism continues to influence literature today; Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight novels are clear descendants of the movement, incorporating most of the characteristics of classic Romanticism despite being published a century and a half after the end of the movement’s active life.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. " Romanticism ."

Cambridge University Press. " The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism ."

Poetry Foundation. " William Wordsworth ."

University of Florida. " Romantic Myth Making: The Sympathetic Soulmate From Romanticism to Twilight and Beyond ."

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121 Romanticism Essay Topics & Examples

In a romanticism essay, you can explore a variety of topics, from American literature to British paintings. For that task, these ideas of romanticism collected by our team will be helpful!

🏆 Best Romanticism Ideas & Essay Examples

• ⭐ Simple & Easy Romanticism Essay Titles

📌 Most Interesting Romanticism Essay Topics

👍 good research ideas on romanticism, ❓ essay questions on romanticism.

• Wordsworth’s Romanticism in Tintern Abbey Poem The tone of the poem is calm and meditative and Wordsworth describes the “landscape” and compares it to the “quiet” of the sky: “The landscape with the quiet of the sky”..
• Romanticism in Frankenstein: The Use of Poetry in the Novel’s Narrative Although the dark and horrific motifs of Frankenstein may appear to contrast with the bright tones and subjects of such poetry, there is a clear connection, as established in the text, between the poetry of […]
• Between Romanticism and Modernism The first of the modernists in music sought to begin new dimensions and depths in music through the use of non-conventional instruments and novel sounds.
• The French Revolution: Romanticism Period Romanticism was anchored in the work of the poets which was evident in the daily lives of the society. Besides, the role of women in romantic literature was significant, thus; they were greatest poets and […]
• Feminism Builds up in Romanticism, Realism, Modernism Exploring the significance of the theme as well as the motifs of this piece, it becomes essential to understand that the era of modernism injected individualism in the literary works.
• Romanticism in Wolfgang Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther It is the fruitless reconciliation of the impulsive and sensitive to the society that makes Young Werther’s journey so powerful. What is even more interesting is that this general tone is what led to the […]
• Romanticism and Victorian Literature Comparison In this respect, literature can be proud of the Romanticism and Victorian literature, because of their gradual framework and applicable emergence due to the significant events, such as the French Revolution, American Revolution, the defeat […]
• Nature in 18th Century and Romanticism Literatures The anxiety inherent in a sketch – the feeling of being unsettled – leads Goldsmith to other stylistic choices, most notably the creation of illusions and the reliance upon sentiment, both of which smooth away […]
• Romanticism, Baroque and Renaissance Paintings’ Analysis It is possible to focus on such artworks as the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar Friedrich, The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio, and Raphael’s The School of Athens.
• Nature as the Mean of Expression in Romanticism The period of Romanticism is characterized by its address to nature, in other words, the world was perceived through the nature.”It is characterized by a shift from the structured, intellectual, reasoned approach of the 1700’s […]
• Romanticism and the Modern Theatre The statement by the Romantic writer confirms the need to involve ordinary people in the theatre. The relationship between Faust and the devil in Goethe’s play is different from that in the traditional myth.
• The History of the Romanticism Period Romanticism refers to the period of intellectual, artistic and literary movement in Europe in the first half of nineteenth century. The supporters of the Romantic Movement point to the spontaneous and irrational display of powerful […]
• Gothic Romanticism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Nathaniel Hawthorn’s “The Birthmark” In the film “The Black Swan” directed by Darren Aronofsky, Nina struggles to fit into the ultimate role of the play “The Swan Lake”, as the Black Swan, even though she is comfortable playing the […]
• Restoration Literature and Romanticism: Common Facts All in all, the period of Restoration in the English literature can be described as the vindication of mind, intellectual values and political interests. The diction of this period is soft, inspiring, light and moving.
• Romanticism of Blake’s and Ghalib’s Poems In this journal, I will look at how Blake and Ghalib exemplify the Romantic movement, how their works differ from those of the Enlightenment, and the significance of their democratic and accessible writing style.
• Romanticism: Beethoven’s Pathétique and Douglass’ The Narrative Two such examples of Romanticism works are Beethoven’s piano sonata, Pathetique, and Frederick Douglass’s The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
• Researching of Musical Romanticism The critical characteristics of musical Romanticism could be seen in the stress on uniqueness and individuality, the expression of one’s emotions, and freedom of form and experimentation.
• Renaissance and Romanticism: Concepts of Beauty Titian, as a representative of the Renaissance, depicted a portrait of a girl in compliance with all the canons of his time.
• Romanticism as an Ideological and Artistic Trend Romanticism in painting rejected the rationalism of classicism and reflected the attention to the depths of the human personality characteristic of the philosophy of the Romantics.
• Romanticism in Modern Ecological Literature The current efforts by humans to safeguard the environment, coupled with the onset of ecological literature, not only indicates that romanticism never disappeared but also proves that the romantics were right. The artists were critical […]
• Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, and Rococo Thus, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the neoclassical style was widely popular in Europe. This style contradicted the coldness and simplicity of neoclassicism.
• Features of French Romanticism in Camille Saint-Saens’s Music It is important to analyze Camille Saint-Saens’s works in the context of French Romanticism because the composer often combined the elements of French Romanticism with features typical of other movements and music styles like habanera.
• Romanticism. Artists Associated With the Movement Art dealt mostly with issues of motive and realism while other forms of art dealt with the darkness of the community on one hand and its magnificence on the other.

⭐ Simple & Easy Romanticism Essay Titles

• Gothic Romanticism of Edgar Allen Poe When the thought of today, the nineteenth-century writer Edgar Allan Poe is remembered as the master of the short story and the psychological thriller.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poetry: British Romanticism There can be no doubt as to the fact that Romantic writers and poets strongly opposed the ideals of the French Revolution; however, this was not due to these ideals’ rational essence, but because, during […]
• Revolution and Romanticism in Europe and America The analysis of romanticism presentation on the basis of Rousseau’s theory is to be reflected through the atmosphere of French revolution period. Romanticism of Rousseau appeared to be close to the approach of ‘primitivism’, characterizing […]
• Romanticism: Paintings by Francisco Goya The first painting depicted a nude woman in the Western art and the second painting was painted after controversial thoughts from the Spanish society over the meaning of The Nude Maja.
• Tristan and Isolde Opera Romanticism The Tristan and Isolde drama is influenced by a wide range of things. Wagner uses the voices to show what is in the thoughts of Isolde and her attendant.
• British Romanticism and Its Origins It was partially a rebellion against aristocratic social and political standards of the Age of Enlightenment and a response against the scientific explanation of nature and was exemplified most powerfully in the visual arts, music, […]
• Romanticizing Literature, Visual Arts and Music During Romanticism 1800-1850 As “it emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental”, the Romanticism period inspired many artists in the field of literature, painting, music, […]
• Enlightenment and Romanticism: Comparison In the wake up of the feminist and historicist takes to pieces of the older Romanticism, particularly Bloom’s “creative thinker corporation” and the Wordsworth-centered verse of consciousness and the natural world, one has to inquire […]
• American Romanticism of “The Minister’s Black Veil” In the story Hawthorne pondered upon the three ways of making God’s word clearer to people. The author himself and his main hero saw the mission of a clergyman in explaining the Bible to the […]
• Chopin: Musician Who Had Effect Romanticism Music At the beginning of the musical period known as Romanticism Frederic Chopin was born in Poland. The piano was his chosen instrument and one that he mastered at a very young age.
• The Age of Romanticism and Its Factors Characteristics of the genre identified by Welleck include a “revolt against the principles of neo-classicism criticism, the rediscovery of older English literature, the turn toward subjectivity and the worship of external nature slowly prepared during […]
• Neoclassicism and Romanticism: Comparison They were the two poles of architectural thinking on the side of Neoclassicism was a rational, objective, almost scientific method of thought, which put reason in the first place among human abilities.
• Romanticism. Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” One of the most typical traits of romantic literature is the prevalence of emotions, setting the natural world above the created world, and the most important, freedom of an individual.
• Baroque and Romanticism Art Periods and Influences The above two works of art depict great disparities in art as a result of communal, political, and economic factors of mankind during the periods.
• The Age of Romanticism: Dances Articles Analysis On the one hand, it seems that these two writings have nothing in common except the intentions of the authors to make contributions to the field of dance and choose the theme of ballet for […]
• Edgar Allan Poe, an American Romanticism Writer Poe’s three works “The fall of the house of Usher”, “the Raven” and “The Masque of the Red Death” describe his dedication to literature and his negative attitudes towards aristocracy.
• Romanticism in Seascape Painting by Jules Dupre In particular, it is important to examine the stylistic peculiarities of this artwork and the way in which it reflects the cultural trends that emerged in the nineteenth century.
• Nineteenth Century Romanticism The works of early composers, writers, painters, and poets evolved from the onset, and in the increased quest for perfection, a spirit of romanticism was born.
• Art influences Culture: Romanticism & Realism In addition, the paper also highlights issues of the time and influences of the later works on the art world. Realism presented events of the society as they happened in reality.
• Ethnocentrism, Romanticism, Exoticism, and Primitivism as Depicted in James Cameron’s “Avatar” Ethnocentrism is depicted in most scenes of Avatar; the film outlines Na’vi’s ways of life and the way the protagonist is forced to profess the culture before being admitted into the community.
• Romanticism Period in Art 3 It is against this scope that this paper aims to explore the aspect of romanticism in the history of painting by considering the works of artists such as Kauffmann, David, Delacroix and Gros.
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Poems & Poets

British Romanticism

An introduction to the poetic revolution that brought common people to literature’s highest peaks..

BY The Editors

“[I]f Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all,” proposed John Keats in an 1818 letter, at the age of 22. This could be called  romantic  in sentiment, lowercase  r , meaning fanciful, impractical, unachievably ambitious. But Keats’s axiom could also be taken as a one-sentence distillation of British Romanticism—with its all-or-nothing stance on the spontaneity of the highest art, its conviction of the sympathetic connections between nature’s organic growth and human creativity, and its passion for individual imagination as an originating force. This period is generally mapped from the first political and poetic tremors of the 1780s to the 1832 Reform Act. No major period in English-language literary history is shorter than that half-century of the Romantic era, but few other eras have ever proved as consequential. Romanticism was nothing short of a revolution in how poets understood their art, its provenance, and its powers: ever since, English-language poets have furthered that revolution or formulated reactions against it.

In Britain, Romanticism was not a single unified movement, consolidated around any one person, place, moment, or manifesto, and the various schools, styles, and stances we now label  capital-R Romantic  would resist being lumped into one clear category. Yet all of Romanticism’s products exploded out of the same set of contexts: some were a century in the making; others were overnight upheavals. Ushered in by revolutions in the United States (1776) and France (1789), the Romantic period coincides with the societal transformations of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of liberal movements and the state’s counterrevolutionary measures, and the voicing of radical ideas—Parliamentary reform, expanded suffrage, abolitionism, atheism—in pamphlets and public demonstrations. Though Britain avoided an actual revolution, political tensions sporadically broke out into traumatizing violence, as in the Peterloo massacre of 1819, in which state cavalry killed at least 10 peaceful demonstrators and wounded hundreds more.

Emboldened by the era’s revolutionary spirit, Romantic poets invented new literary forms to match. Romantic poetry can argue radical ideas explicitly and vehemently (as in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “England in 1819,” a sonnet in protest of Peterloo) or allegorically and ambivalently (as in William Blake’s “The Tyger,” from  Songs of Innocence and of Experience ). To quote from William Wordsworth’s preface to  Lyrical Ballads,  the groundbreaking collection he wrote with fellow poet-critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Romantic poets could “choose incidents and situations from common life” as its subjects, describing them not in polished or high-flown diction but instead in everyday speech, “a selection of language really used by men.” Romanticism can do justice to the disadvantaged, to those marginalized or forgotten by an increasingly urban and commercial culture—rural workers, children, the poor, the elderly, or the disabled—or it can testify to individuality simply by foregrounding the poet’s own subjectivity at its most idiosyncratic or experimental.

Alongside prevailing political and social ideas, Romantic poets put into practice new aesthetic theories, cobbled from British and German philosophy, which opposed the neoclassicism and rigid decorum of 18th-century poetry. To borrow the central dichotomy of critic M.H. Abrams’s influential book  The Mirror and the Lamp  (1953), Romantic poets broke from the past by no longer producing artistic works that merely mirrored or reflected nature faithfully; instead, they fashioned poems that served as lamps illuminating truths through self-expression, casting the poets’ subjective, even impressionistic, experiences onto the world. From philosophers such as Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, the Romantics inherited a distinction between two aesthetic categories, the beautiful and the sublime—in which  beautiful  suggests smallness, clarity, and painless pleasure, and  sublime  suggests boundlessness, obscurity, and imagination-stretching grandeur. From the German critic A.W. Schlegel, Coleridge developed his ideal of “organic form,” the unity found in artworks whose parts are interdependent and integral to the whole—grown, like a natural organism, according to innate processes, not externally mandated formulas.

The most self-conscious and self-critical British poets to date, the Romantics justified their poetic experimentations in a variety of prose genres (prefaces, reviews, essays, diaries, letters, works of autobiography or philosophy) or else inside the poetry itself. But they never wrote only for other poets and critics: the Romantics competed in a burgeoning literary marketplace that made room for the revival of English and Scottish ballads (narrative folk songs, transcribed and disseminated in print), the recovery of medieval romances (one etymological root of  Romantic ), and prose fiction ranging from the psychological extremes of the gothic novel to the wit of Jane Austen’s social realism. Romantic poets looked curiously backward—to Greek mythology, friezes, and urns or to a distinctly British cultural past of medieval ruins and tales of knights and elves—to look speculatively forward. Perhaps no pre-Romantic author inspired the Romantics more than William Shakespeare, who exemplified what Keats termed “ Negative Capability , that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” For Keats, “a great poet” such as Shakespeare opened his imagination to all possibilities, limited neither by an insistent search for truth nor by his own egocentric gravity: “the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.”

Drawing on unrestrained imagination and a variegated cultural landscape, a Romantic-era poem could be trivial or fantastic, succinctly songlike or digressively meandering, a searching fragment or a precisely bounded sonnet or ode, as comic as Lord Byron’s mock epic  Don Juan  or as cosmologically subversive as Blake’s  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell . If any single innovation has emerged as Romanticism’s foremost legacy, it is the dominance among poetic genres of the lyric poem, spoken in first-person (the lyric  I ) often identified with the poet, caught between passion and reason, finding correspondences in natural surroundings for the introspective workings of heart and mind. If any collection cemented that legacy, it would be Wordsworth and Coleridge’s landmark collection  Lyrical Ballads , first published anonymously in 1798. The collection provokes with its title alone, inverting hierarchies, hybridizing the exalted outbursts of lyric poetry with the folk narratives of ballads. In a retrospective preface added for the 1800 second edition and expanded in later editions, Wordsworth set out his polemical program for a poetry grounded in feeling, supplying Romanticism with some of its most resonant and lasting phrases: “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”; “it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”

The following poems, poets, articles, poem guides, and recordings offer introductory samples of the Romantic era. Included are the monumental Romantic poets often nicknamed “the Big Six”—the older generation of Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge and the so-called Young Romantics—Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Indispensable women poets such as Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, and Felicia Dorothea Hemans; the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns; and the farm laborer–poet John Clare are also represented. But even this collection is only a beginning: no introduction to Romanticism can encompass the entire period in all its variety and restless experimentation.

• William Wordsworth
• Lord Byron (George Gordon)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Mary Robinson
• Robert Southey
• Sir Walter Scott
• Anna Lætitia Barbauld
• Dorothy Wordsworth
• Walter Savage Landor
• Thomas Chatterton
• Charlotte Smith
• Felicia Dorothea Hemans
• Charles Lamb
• Letitia Elizabeth Landon
• Charlotte Richardson
• George Crabbe
• Hannah More
• Hartley Coleridge

Observations Prefixed to Lyrical Ballads

from “On Poetry in General”

Selections from Keats’s Letters

A Defence of Poetry

from Biographia Literaria , Chapter XIV

William Wordsworth 101

John Keats: Selections

William Blake 101

Lightning Strikes Twice

Keats and King Lear

Keats in Space

A Little Society

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Ode to the West Wind

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (text of 1834)

The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Ode to a Nightingale

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798

Don Juan : Dedication

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

A Red, Red Rose

She Walks in Beauty

from The Prelude: Book 1: Childhood and School-time

Tam O 'Shanter

The Book of Thel

The Rights of Women

from Endymion

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Huge Vapours Brood above the Clifted Shore

The Sick Rose

So We'll Go No More a Roving

This Lime-tree Bower my Prison

When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be

To a Skylark

John Keats: “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

John Clare: “To John Clare”

John Keats: “La Belle Dame sans Merci”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Frost at Midnight”

Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ozymandias”

John Keats: “To Autumn”

Percy Bysshe Shelley: “England in 1819”

This Poet Never Gets Old

Fact-Checking John Keats

The Cure for Romanticism?

I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud ("Daffodils")

• Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period
• Stanford Guide to Romantic Aesthetics
• The Romantics at the British Library
• British Women Romantic Poets at Calisphere
• Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry
• Romantic Circles Journal
• The MET’s Timeline of Art History: Romanticism
• The William Blake Archive
• Wordsworth Museum and Dove Cottage
• Keats Letters Project

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Themes of The Romantic Period

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Romantic Literature (1820–1860)

The romantic period, 1820–1860: essayists and poets, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles.

The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some twenty years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing  Lyrical Ballads . In America as in Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces of “the American Renaissance.”

Romantic ideas centered around art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature, and metaphors of organic growth. Art, rather than science, Romantics argued, could best express universal truth. The Romantics underscored the importance of expressive art for the individual and society. In his essay “The Poet” (1844), Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps the most influential writer of the Romantic era, asserts:

For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.

The development of the self became a major theme; self-awareness a primary method. If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, self-awareness was not a selfish dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe. If one’s self were one with all humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human suffering. The idea of “self”—which suggested selfishness to earlier generations—was redefined. New compound words with positive meanings emerged: “self-realization,” “self-expression,” “self-reliance.”

As the unique, subjective self became important, so did the realm of psychology. Exceptional artistic effects and techniques were developed to evoke heightened psychological states. The “sublime”—an effect of beauty in grandeur (for example, a view from a mountaintop)—produced feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension.

Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative essayists. America’s vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime. The Romantic spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical values. Certainly the New England Transcendentalists—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and their associates—were inspired to a new optimistic affirmation by the Romantic movement. In New England, Romanticism fell upon fertile soil.

Transcendentalism

The Transcendentalist movement was a reaction against 18th century rationalism and a manifestation of the general humanitarian trend of nineteenth century thought. The movement was based on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. The soul of each individual was thought to be identical with the world—a microcosm of the world itself. The doctrine of self-reliance and individualism developed through the belief in the identification of the individual soul with God.

Transcendentalism was intimately connected with Concord, a small New England village thirty-two kilometers west of Boston. Concord was the first inland settlement of the original Massachusetts Bay Colony. Surrounded by forest, it was and remains a peaceful town close enough to Boston’s lectures, bookstores, and colleges to be intensely cultivated, but far enough away to be serene. Concord was the site of the first battle of the American Revolution, and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem commemorating the battle, “Concord Hymn,” has one of the most famous opening stanzas in American literature:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.

Concord was the first rural artist’s colony, and the first place to offer a spiritual and cultural alternative to American materialism. It was a place of high-minded conversation and simple living (Emerson and Henry David Thoreau both had vegetable gardens). Emerson, who moved to Concord in 1834, and Thoreau are most closely associated with the town, but the locale also attracted the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, the feminist writer Margaret Fuller, the educator (and father of novelist Louisa May Alcott) Bronson Alcott, and the poet William Ellery Channing. The Transcendental Club was loosely organized in 1836 and included, at various times, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Channing, Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson (a leading minister), Theodore Parker (abolitionist and minister), and others.

The Transcendentalists published a quarterly magazine,  The Dial , which lasted four years and was first edited by Margaret Fuller and later by Emerson. Reform efforts engaged them as well as literature. A number of Transcendentalists were abolitionists, and some were involved in experimental utopian communities such as nearby Brook Farm (described in Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance ) and Fruitlands.

Unlike many European groups, the Transcendentalists never issued a manifesto. They insisted on individual differences – on the unique viewpoint of the individual. American Transcendental Romantics pushed radical individualism to the extreme. American writers often saw themselves as lonely explorers outside society and convention. The American hero—like Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab, or Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, or Edgar Allan Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym—typically faced risk, or even certain destruction, in the pursuit of metaphysical self-discovery. For the Romantic American writer, nothing was a given. Literary and social conventions, far from being helpful, were dangerous. There was tremendous pressure to discover an authentic literary form, content, and voice – all at the same time. It is clear from the many masterpieces produced in the three decades before the U.S. Civil War (1861–65) that American writers rose to the challenge.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the towering figure of his era, had a religious sense of mission. Although many accused him of subverting Christianity, he explained that, for him “to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the church.” The address he delivered in 1838 at his alma mater, the Harvard Divinity School, made him unwelcome at Harvard for thirty years. In it, Emerson accused the church of acting “as if God were dead” and of emphasizing dogma while stifling the spirit.

Emerson’s philosophy has been called contradictory, and it is true that he consciously avoided building a logical intellectual system because such a rational system would have negated his Romantic belief in intuition and flexibility. In his essay “Self-Reliance,” Emerson remarks: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Yet he is remarkably consistent in his call for the birth of American individualism inspired by nature. Most of his major ideas—the need for a new national vision, the use of personal experience, the notion of the cosmic Over-Soul, and the doctrine of compensation—are suggested in his first publication, Nature (1836). This essay opens:

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs. Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past…? The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

Emerson loved the aphoristic genius of the sixteenth-century French essayist Montaigne, and he once told Bronson Alcott that he wanted to write a book like Montaigne’s, “full of fun, poetry, business, divinity, philosophy, anecdotes, smut.” He complained that Alcott’s abstract style omitted “the light that shines on a man’s hat, in a child’s spoon.”

Spiritual vision and practical, aphoristic expression make Emerson exhilarating; one of the Concord Transcendentalists aptly compared listening to him with “going to heaven in a swing.” Much of his spiritual insight comes from his readings in Eastern religion, especially Hinduism, Confucianism, and Islamic Sufism. For example, his poem “Brahma” relies on Hindu sources to assert a cosmic order beyond the limited perception of mortals:

If the red slayer think he slay Or the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven, But thou, meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

This poem, published in the first number of the  Atlantic Monthly magazine (1857), confused readers unfamiliar with Brahma, the highest Hindu god, the eternal and infinite soul of the universe. Emerson had this advice for his readers: “Tell them to say Jehovah instead of Brahma.”

The British critic Matthew Arnold said the most important writings in English in the nineteenth century had been Wordsworth’s poems and Emerson’s essays. A great prose-poet, Emerson influenced a long line of American poets, including Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and Robert Frost. He is also credited with influencing the philosophies of John Dewey, George Santayana, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James.

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

Henry David Thoreau, of French and Scottish descent, was born in Concord and made it his permanent home. From a poor family, like Emerson, he worked his way through Harvard. Throughout his life, he reduced his needs to the simplest level and managed to live on very little money, thus maintaining his independence. In essence, he made living his career. A nonconformist, he attempted to live his life at all times according to his rigorous principles. This attempt was the subject of many of his writings.

Thoreau’s masterpiece,  Walden , or Life in the Woods (1854), is the result of two years, two months, and two days (from 1845 to 1847) he spent living in a cabin he built at Walden Pond on property owned by Emerson. In Walden , Thoreau consciously shapes this time into one year, and the book is carefully constructed so the seasons are subtly evoked in order. The book also is organized so that the simplest earthly concerns come first (in the section called “Economy,” he describes the expenses of building a cabin); by the ending, the book has progressed to meditations on the stars.

In  Walden , Thoreau, a lover of travel books and the author of several, gives us an anti-travel book that paradoxically opens the inner frontier of self-discovery as no American book had up to this time. As deceptively modest as Thoreau’s ascetic life, it is no less than a guide to living the classical ideal of the good life. Both poetry and philosophy, this long poetic essay challenges the reader to examine his or her life and live it authentically. The building of the cabin, described in great detail, is a concrete metaphor for the careful building of a soul. In his journal for January 30, 1852, Thoreau explains his preference for living rooted in one place: “I am afraid to travel much or to famous places, lest it might completely dissipate the mind.”

Thoreau’s method of retreat and concentration resembles Asian meditation techniques. The resemblance is not accidental: like Emerson and Whitman, he was influenced by Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. His most treasured possession was his library of Asian classics, which he shared with Emerson. His eclectic style draws on Greek and Latin classics and is crystalline, punning, and as richly metaphorical as the English metaphysical writers of the late Renaissance.

In Walden , Thoreau not only tests the theories of Transcendentalism, he reenacts the collective American experience of the nineteenth century: living on the frontier. Thoreau felt that his contribution would be to renew a sense of the wilderness in language. His journal has an undated entry from 1851:

English literature from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets, Chaucer and Spenser and Shakespeare and Milton included, breathes no quite fresh and in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a greenwood, her wildman a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of nature in her poets, but not so much of nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not the wildman in her, became extinct. There was need of America.

Walden inspired William Butler Yeats, a passionate Irish nationalist, to write “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” while Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience,” with its theory of passive resistance based on the moral necessity for the just individual to disobey unjust laws, was an inspiration for Mahatma Gandhi’s Indian independence movement and Martin Luther King’s struggle for black Americans’ civil rights in the twentieth century.

Thoreau is the most attractive of the Transcendentalists today because of his ecological consciousness, do-it-yourself independence, ethical commitment to abolitionism, and political theory of civil disobedience and peaceful resistance. His ideas are still fresh, and his incisive poetic style and habit of close observation are still modern.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

Born on Long Island, New York, Walt Whitman was a part-time carpenter and man of the people, whose brilliant, innovative work expressed the country’s democratic spirit. Whitman was largely self-taught; he left school at the age of 11 to go to work, missing the sort of traditional education that made most American authors respectful imitators of the English. His  Leaves of Grass (1855), which he rewrote and revised throughout his life, contains “Song of Myself,” the most stunningly original poem ever written by an American. The enthusiastic praise that Emerson and a few others heaped on this daring volume confirmed Whitman in his poetic vocation, although the book was not a popular success.

A visionary book celebrating all creation,  Leaves of Grass was inspired largely by Emerson’s writings, especially his essay “The Poet,” which predicted a robust, open-hearted, universal kind of poet uncannily like Whitman himself. The poem’s innovative, unrhymed, free-verse form, open celebration of sexuality, vibrant democratic sensibility, and extreme Romantic assertion that the poet’s self was one with the poem, the universe, and the reader permanently altered the course of American poetry.

Leaves of Grass is as vast, energetic, and natural as the American continent; it was the epic generations of American critics had been calling for, although they did not recognize it. Movement ripples through “Song of Myself” like restless music:

My ties and ballasts leave me . . . I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents I am afoot with my vision.

The poem bulges with myriad concrete sights and sounds. Whitman’s birds are not the conventional “winged spirits” of poetry. His “yellow-crown’d heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs.” Whitman seems to project himself into everything that he sees or imagines. He is mass man, “Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure, / Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any.” But he is equally the suffering individual, “The mother of old, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on….I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs….I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken….”

More than any other writer, Whitman invented the myth of democratic America. “The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States is essentially the greatest poem.” When Whitman wrote this, he daringly turned upside down the general opinion that America was too brash and new to be poetic. He invented a timeless America of the free imagination, peopled with pioneering spirits of all nations. D.H. Lawrence, the British novelist and poet, accurately called him the poet of the “open road.”

Whitman’s greatness is visible in many of his poems, among them “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” a moving elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln. Another important work is his long essay “Democratic Vistas” (1871), written during the unrestrained materialism of industrialism’s “Gilded Age.” In this essay, Whitman justly criticizes America for its “mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry” that mask an underlying “dry and flat Sahara” of soul. He calls for a new kind of literature to revive the American population (“Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does”). Yet ultimately, Whitman’s main claim to immortality lies in “Song of Myself.” Here he places the Romantic self at the center of the consciousness of the poem:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Whitman’s voice electrifies even modern readers with his proclamation of the unity and vital force of all creation. He was enormously innovative. From him spring the poem as autobiography, the American Everyman as bard, the reader as creator, and the still-contemporary discovery of “experimental,” or organic, form.

The Brahmin Poets

In their time, the Boston Brahmins (as the patrician, Harvard-educated class came to be called) supplied the most respected and genuinely cultivated literary arbiters of the United States. Their lives fitted a pleasant pattern of wealth and leisure directed by the strong New England work ethic and respect for learning.

In an earlier Puritan age, the Boston Brahmins would have been ministers; in the nineteenth century, they became professors, often at Harvard. Late in life they sometimes became ambassadors or received honorary degrees from European institutions. Most of them travelled or were educated in Europe: They were familiar with the ideas and books of Britain, Germany, and France, and often Italy and Spain. Upper class in background but democratic in sympathy, the Brahmin poets carried their genteel, European-oriented views to every section of the United States, through public lectures at the three thousand lyceums (centers for public lectures) and in the pages of two influential Boston magazines, the  North American Review and the Atlantic Monthly .

The writings of the Brahmin poets fused American and European traditions and sought to create a continuity of shared Atlantic experience. These scholar-poets attempted to educate and elevate the general populace by introducing a European dimension to American literature. Ironically, their overall effect was conservative. By insisting on European things and forms, they retarded the growth of a distinctive American consciousness. Well-meaning men, their conservative backgrounds blinded them to the daring innovativeness of Thoreau, Whitman (whom they refused to meet socially), and Edgar Allan Poe (whom even Emerson regarded as the “jingle man”). They were pillars of what was called the “genteel tradition” that three generations of American realists had to battle. Partly because of their benign but bland influence, it was almost one hundred years before the distinctive American genius of Whitman, Melville, Thoreau, and Poe was generally recognized in the United States.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

The most important Boston Brahmin poets were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell. Longfellow, professor of modern languages at Harvard, was the best-known American poet of his day. He was responsible for the misty, ahistorical, legendary sense of the past that merged American and European traditions. He wrote three long narrative poems popularizing native legends in European meters “Evangeline” (1847), “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855), and “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858).

Longfellow also wrote textbooks on modern languages and a travel book entitled  Outre-Mer , retelling foreign legends and patterned after Washington Irving’s Sketch Book . Although conventionality, sentimentality, and facile handling mar the long poems, haunting short lyrics like “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport” (1854), “My Lost Youth” (1855), and “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls” (1880) continue to give pleasure.

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

James Russell Lowell, who became professor of modern languages at Harvard after Longfellow retired, is the Matthew Arnold of American literature. He began as a poet but gradually lost his poetic ability, ending as a respected critic and educator. As editor of the  Atlantic and co-editor of the North American Review , Lowell exercised enormous influence. Lowell’s A Fable for Critics (1848) is a funny and apt appraisal of American writers, as in his comment: “There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.”

Under his wife’s influence, Lowell became a liberal reformer, abolitionist, and supporter of women’s suffrage and laws ending child labor. His  Biglow  Papers, First Series (1847–48) creates Hosea Biglow, a shrewd but uneducated village poet who argues for reform in dialect poetry. Benjamin Franklin and Phillip Freneau had used intelligent villagers as mouthpieces for social commentary. Lowell writes in the same vein, linking the colonial “character” tradition with the new realism and regionalism based on dialect that flowered in the 1850s and came to fruition in Mark Twain.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894)

Oliver Wendell Holmes, a celebrated physician and professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, is the hardest of the three well-known Brahmins to categorize because his work is marked by a refreshing versatility. It encompasses collections of humorous essays (for example, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table , 1858), novels ( Elsie Venner , 1861), biographies ( Ralph Waldo Emerson , 1885), and verse that could be sprightly (“The Deacon’s Masterpiece, or, The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay”), philosophical (“The Chambered Nautilus”), or fervently patriotic (“Old Ironsides”).

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the suburb of Boston that is home to Harvard, Holmes was the son of a prominent local minister. His mother was a descendant of the poet Anne Bradstreet. In his time, and more so thereafter, he symbolized wit, intelligence, and charm not as a discoverer or a trailblazer, but rather as an exemplary interpreter of everything from society and language to medicine and human nature.

Two Reformers

New England sparkled with intellectual energy in the years before the Civil War. Some of the stars that shine more brightly today than the famous constellation of Brahmins were dimmed by poverty or accidents of gender or race in their own time. Modern readers increasingly value the work of abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier and feminist and social reformer Margaret Fuller.

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)

John Greenleaf Whittier, the most active poet of the era, had a background very similar to Walt Whitman’s. He was born and raised on a modest Quaker farm in Massachusetts, had little formal education, and worked as a journalist. For decades before it became popular, he was an ardent abolitionist. Whittier is respected for anti-slavery poems such as “Ichabod,” and his poetry is sometimes viewed as an early example of regional realism.

Whittier’s sharp images, simple constructions, and ballad-like tetrameter couplets have the simple earthy texture of Robert Burns. His best work, the long poem “Snow Bound,” vividly recreates the poet’s deceased family members and friends as he remembers them from childhood, huddled cozily around the blazing hearth during one of New England’s blustering snowstorms. This simple, religious, intensely personal poem, coming after the long nightmare of the Civil War, is an elegy for the dead and a healing hymn. It affirms the eternity of the spirit, the timeless power of love in the memory, and the undiminished beauty of nature, despite violent outer political storms.

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)

Margaret Fuller, an outstanding essayist, was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From a modest financial background, she was educated at home by her father (women were not allowed to attend Harvard) and became a child prodigy in the classics and modern literatures. Her special passion was German Romantic literature, especially Goethe, whom she translated.

The first professional woman journalist of note in America, Fuller wrote influential book reviews and reports on social issues such as the treatment of women prisoners and the insane. Some of these essays were published in her book  Papers on Literature and Art (1846). A year earlier, she had her most significant book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century . It originally had appeared in the Transcendentalist magazine, The Dial , which she edited from 1840 to 1842.

Fuller’s  Woman in the Nineteenth Century is the earliest and most American exploration of women’s role in society. Often applying democratic and Transcendental principles, Fuller thoughtfully analyzes the numerous subtle causes and evil consequences of sexual discrimination and suggests positive steps to be taken. Many of her ideas are strikingly modern. She stresses the importance of “self-dependence,” which women lack because “they are taught to learn their rule from without, not to unfold it from within.”

Fuller is finally not a feminist so much as an activist and reformer dedicated to the cause of creative human freedom and dignity for all:

. . . Let us be wise and not impede the soul. . . . Let us have one creative energy. . . .Let it take what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or woman, black or white.

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

Emily Dickinson is, in a sense, a link between her era and the literary sensitivities of the turn of the century. A radical individualist, she was born and spent her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, a small Calvinist village. She never married, and she led an unconventional life that was outwardly uneventful but was full of inner intensity. She loved nature and found deep inspiration in the birds, animals, plants, and changing seasons of the New England countryside.

Dickinson spent the latter part of her life as a recluse, due to an extremely sensitive psyche and possibly to make time for writing (for stretches of time she wrote about one poem a day). Her day also included homemaking for her attorney father, a prominent figure in Amherst who became a member of Congress.

Dickinson was not widely read, but knew the Bible, the works of William Shakespeare, and works of classical mythology in great depth. These were her true teachers, for Dickinson was certainly the most solitary literary figure of her time. That this shy, withdrawn, village woman, almost unpublished and unknown, created some of the greatest American poetry of the nineteenth century has fascinated the public since the 1950s, when her poetry was rediscovered.

Dickinson’s terse, frequently imagistic style is even more modern and innovative than Whitman’s. She never uses two words when one will do, and combines concrete things with abstract ideas in an almost proverbial, compressed style. Her best poems have no fat; many mock current sentimentality, and some are even heretical. She sometimes shows a terrifying existential awareness. Like Poe, she explores the dark and hidden part of the mind, dramatizing death and the grave. Yet she also celebrated simple objects – a flower, a bee. Her poetry exhibits great intelligence and often evokes the agonizing paradox of the limits of the human consciousness trapped in time. She had an excellent sense of humor, and her range of subjects and treatment is amazingly wide. Her poems are generally known by the numbers assigned them in Thomas H. Johnson’s standard edition of 1955. They bristle with odd capitalizations and dashes.

A nonconformist, like Thoreau she often reversed meanings of words and phrases and used paradox to great effect. From 435:

Much Madness is divinest sense – To a discerning Eye – Much Sense – the starkest Madness – ‘Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail – Assent – and you are sane – Demur – you’re straightway dangerous And handled with a chain –

Her wit shines in the following poem (288), which ridicules ambition and public life:

I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – Too? Then there’s a pair of us? Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!

Dickinson’s 1,775 poems continue to intrigue critics, who often disagree about them. Some stress her mystical side, some her sensitivity to nature; many note her odd, exotic appeal. One modern critic, R. P. Blackmur, comments that Dickinson’s poetry sometimes feels as if “a cat came at us speaking English.” Her clean, clear, chiseled poems are some of the most fascinating and challenging in American literature.

• The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets. From Outline of American Literature. Authored by : Katherine VanSpanckeren. Located at : http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ENGL405-1.1.1-The-Romantic-Period-1820-to-1860-Essayists-and-Poets.pdf . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

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• Introduction
• Alliterative verse
• The major manuscripts
• Problems of dating
• Religious verse
• Elegiac and heroic verse
• Early translations into English
• Late 10th- and 11th-century prose
• Influence of French poetry
• Didactic poetry
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• Secular prose
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• The transition from medieval to Renaissance
• Social conditions
• Intellectual and religious revolution
• The race for cultural development
• Development of the English language
• Sidney and Spenser
• Elizabethan lyric
• The sonnet sequence
• Other poetic styles
• Prose styles, 1550–1600
• Theatres in London and the provinces
• Professional playwrights
• The early histories
• The early comedies
• The tragedies
• Shakespeare’s later works
• Other Jacobean dramatists
• The last Renaissance dramatists
• Donne’s influence
• Jonson and the Cavalier poets
• Continued influence of Spenser
• Effect of religion and science on early Stuart prose
• Prose styles
• The defeated republicans
• Writings of the Nonconformists
• Writings of the royalists
• Chroniclers
• The court wits
• Drama by Dryden and others
• Thomson, Prior, and Gay
• Shaftesbury and others
• Other novelists
• Johnson’s poetry and prose

The nature of Romanticism

Blake, wordsworth, and coleridge, other poets of the early romantic period.

• The later Romantics: Shelley, Keats, and Byron
• Other poets of the later period
• The novel: from the Gothic novel to Austen and Scott
• Discursive prose
• Thackeray, Gaskell, and others
• The Brontës
• Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Arnold and Clough
• Early Victorian nonfiction prose
• The Victorian theater
• Victorian literary comedy
• The Edwardians
• Anglo-American Modernism: Pound, Lewis, Lawrence, and Eliot
• Celtic Modernism: Yeats, Joyce, Jones, and MacDiarmid
• The literature of World War I and the interwar period
• The literature of World War II (1939–45)
• The 21st century

• Who was John Newton?
• Why did John Newton write “Amazing Grace”?

The Romantic period

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As a term to cover the most distinctive writers who flourished in the last years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th, “Romantic” is indispensable but also a little misleading: there was no self-styled “Romantic movement” at the time, and the great writers of the period did not call themselves Romantics . Not until August Wilhelm von Schlegel ’s Vienna lectures of 1808–09 was a clear distinction established between the “organic,” “plastic” qualities of Romantic art and the “mechanical” character of Classicism.

Many of the age’s foremost writers thought that something new was happening in the world’s affairs, nevertheless. William Blake ’s affirmation in 1793 that “a new heaven is begun” was matched a generation later by Percy Bysshe Shelley ’s “The world’s great age begins anew.” “These, these will give the world another heart, / And other pulses,” wrote John Keats , referring to Leigh Hunt and William Wordsworth . Fresh ideals came to the fore; in particular, the ideal of freedom, long cherished in England , was being extended to every range of human endeavor. As that ideal swept through Europe , it became natural to believe that the age of tyrants might soon end.

The most notable feature of the poetry of the time is the new role of individual thought and personal feeling. Where the main trend of 18th-century poetics had been to praise the general, to see the poet as a spokesman of society addressing a cultivated and homogeneous audience and having as his end the conveyance of “truth,” the Romantics found the source of poetry in the particular, unique experience. Blake’s marginal comment on Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses expresses the position with characteristic vehemence: “To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the alone Distinction of Merit.” The poet was seen as an individual distinguished from his fellows by the intensity of his perceptions, taking as his basic subject matter the workings of his own mind. Poetry was regarded as conveying its own truth; sincerity was the criterion by which it was to be judged.

The emphasis on feeling —seen perhaps at its finest in the poems of Robert Burns—was in some ways a continuation of the earlier “cult of sensibility”; and it is worth remembering that Alexander Pope praised his father as having known no language but the language of the heart. But feeling had begun to receive particular emphasis and is found in most of the Romantic definitions of poetry. Wordsworth called poetry “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,” and in 1833 John Stuart Mill defined poetry as “feeling itself, employing thought only as the medium of its utterance.” It followed that the best poetry was that in which the greatest intensity of feeling was expressed, and hence a new importance was attached to the lyric. Another key quality of Romantic writing was its shift from the mimetic, or imitative, assumptions of the Neoclassical era to a new stress on imagination . Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw the imagination as the supreme poetic quality, a quasi-divine creative force that made the poet a godlike being. Samuel Johnson had seen the components of poetry as “invention, imagination and judgement,” but Blake wrote: “One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination, the Divine Vision.” The poets of this period accordingly placed great emphasis on the workings of the unconscious mind, on dreams and reveries, on the supernatural, and on the childlike or primitive view of the world, this last being regarded as valuable because its clarity and intensity had not been overlaid by the restrictions of civilized “reason.” Rousseau’s sentimental conception of the “noble savage” was often invoked , and often by those who were ignorant that the phrase is Dryden’s or that the type was adumbrated in the “poor Indian” of Pope’s An Essay on Man . A further sign of the diminished stress placed on judgment is the Romantic attitude to form: if poetry must be spontaneous, sincere, intense, it should be fashioned primarily according to the dictates of the creative imagination. Wordsworth advised a young poet, “You feel strongly; trust to those feelings, and your poem will take its shape and proportions as a tree does from the vital principle that actuates it.” This organic view of poetry is opposed to the classical theory of “genres,” each with its own linguistic decorum; and it led to the feeling that poetic sublimity was unattainable except in short passages.

Hand in hand with the new conception of poetry and the insistence on a new subject matter went a demand for new ways of writing. Wordsworth and his followers, particularly Keats, found the prevailing poetic diction of the late 18th century stale and stilted, or “gaudy and inane,” and totally unsuited to the expression of their perceptions. It could not be, for them, the language of feeling, and Wordsworth accordingly sought to bring the language of poetry back to that of common speech. Wordsworth’s own diction , however, often differs from his theory. Nevertheless, when he published his preface to Lyrical Ballads in 1800, the time was ripe for a change: the flexible diction of earlier 18th-century poetry had hardened into a merely conventional language.

Useful as it is to trace the common elements in Romantic poetry, there was little conformity among the poets themselves. It is misleading to read the poetry of the first Romantics as if it had been written primarily to express their feelings. Their concern was rather to change the intellectual climate of the age. William Blake had been dissatisfied since boyhood with the current state of poetry and what he considered the irreligious drabness of contemporary thought. His early development of a protective shield of mocking humor with which to face a world in which science had become trifling and art inconsequential is visible in the satirical An Island in the Moon (written c. 1784–85); he then took the bolder step of setting aside sophistication in the visionary Songs of Innocence (1789). His desire for renewal encouraged him to view the outbreak of the French Revolution as a momentous event. In works such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–93) and Songs of Experience (1794), he attacked the hypocrisies of the age and the impersonal cruelties resulting from the dominance of analytic reason in contemporary thought. As it became clear that the ideals of the Revolution were not likely to be realized in his time, he renewed his efforts to revise his contemporaries’ view of the universe and to construct a new mythology centered not in the God of the Bible but in Urizen , a repressive figure of reason and law whom he believed to be the deity actually worshipped by his contemporaries. The story of Urizen’s rise was set out in The First Book of Urizen (1794) and then, more ambitiously, in the unfinished manuscript Vala (later redrafted as The Four Zoas ), written from about 1796 to about 1807.

Blake developed these ideas in the visionary narratives of Milton (1804–08) and Jerusalem (1804–20). Here, still using his own mythological characters, he portrayed the imaginative artist as the hero of society and suggested the possibility of redemption from the fallen (or Urizenic) condition.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge , meanwhile, were also exploring the implications of the French Revolution. Wordsworth, who lived in France in 1791–92 and fathered an illegitimate child there, was distressed when, soon after his return, Britain declared war on the republic, dividing his allegiance . For the rest of his career, he was to brood on those events, trying to develop a view of humanity that would be faithful to his twin sense of the pathos of individual human fates and the unrealized potentialities in humanity as a whole. The first factor emerges in his early manuscript poems “The Ruined Cottage” and “The Pedlar” (both to form part of the later Excursion ); the second was developed from 1797, when he and his sister, Dorothy , with whom he was living in the west of England, were in close contact with Coleridge . Stirred simultaneously by Dorothy’s immediacy of feeling, manifested everywhere in her Journals (written 1798–1803, published 1897), and by Coleridge’s imaginative and speculative genius, he produced the poems collected in Lyrical Ballads (1798). The volume began with Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” continued with poems displaying delight in the powers of nature and the humane instincts of ordinary people, and concluded with the meditative “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth’s attempt to set out his mature faith in nature and humanity.

His investigation of the relationship between nature and the human mind continued in the long autobiographical poem addressed to Coleridge and later titled The Prelude (1798–99 in two books; 1804 in five books; 1805 in 13 books; revised continuously and published posthumously, 1850). Here he traced the value for a poet of having been a child “fostered alike by beauty and by fear” by an upbringing in sublime surroundings. The Prelude constitutes the most significant English expression of the Romantic discovery of the self as a topic for art and literature . The poem also makes much of the work of memory, a theme explored as well in the “ Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood .” In poems such as “ Michael” and “ The Brothers,” by contrast, written for the second volume of Lyrical Ballads (1800), Wordsworth dwelt on the pathos and potentialities of ordinary lives.

Coleridge’s poetic development during these years paralleled Wordsworth’s. Having briefly brought together images of nature and the mind in “ The Eolian Harp” (1796), he devoted himself to more-public concerns in poems of political and social prophecy, such as “Religious Musings” and “The Destiny of Nations.” Becoming disillusioned in 1798 with his earlier politics, however, and encouraged by Wordsworth, he turned back to the relationship between nature and the human mind. Poems such as “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” “The Nightingale,” and “Frost at Midnight” (now sometimes called the “conversation poems” but collected by Coleridge himself as “Meditative Poems in Blank Verse”) combine sensitive descriptions of nature with subtlety of psychological comment. “ Kubla Khan ” (1797 or 1798, published 1816), a poem that Coleridge said came to him in “a kind of Reverie,” represented a new kind of exotic writing, which he also exploited in the supernaturalism of “The Ancient Mariner” and the unfinished “Christabel.” After his visit to Germany in 1798–99, he renewed attention to the links between the subtler forces in nature and the human psyche; this attention bore fruit in letters, notebooks, literary criticism , theology, and philosophy. Simultaneously, his poetic output became sporadic. “ Dejection: An Ode ” (1802), another meditative poem, which first took shape as a verse letter to Sara Hutchinson, Wordsworth’s sister-in-law, memorably describes the suspension of his “shaping spirit of Imagination.”

The work of both poets was directed back to national affairs during these years by the rise of Napoleon . In 1802 Wordsworth dedicated a number of sonnets to the patriotic cause. The death in 1805 of his brother John, who was a captain in the merchant navy , was a grim reminder that, while he had been living in retirement as a poet, others had been willing to sacrifice themselves. From this time the theme of duty was to be prominent in his poetry. His political essay Concerning the Relations of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal…as Affected by the Convention of Cintra (1809) agreed with Coleridge’s periodical The Friend (1809–10) in deploring the decline of principle among statesmen. When The Excursion appeared in 1814 (the time of Napoleon’s first exile), Wordsworth announced the poem as the central section of a longer projected work, The Recluse , “a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society.” The plan was not fulfilled, however, and The Excursion was left to stand in its own right as a poem of moral and religious consolation for those who had been disappointed by the failure of French revolutionary ideals.

Both Wordsworth and Coleridge benefited from the advent in 1811 of the Regency, which brought a renewed interest in the arts. Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare became fashionable, his play Remorse was briefly produced, and his volume of poems Christabel; Kubla Khan: A Vision; The Pains of Sleep was published in 1816. Biographia Literaria (1817), an account of his own development, combined philosophy and literary criticism in a new way and made an enduring and important contribution to literary theory. Coleridge settled at Highgate in 1816, and he was sought there as “the most impressive talker of his age” (in the words of the essayist William Hazlitt). His later religious writings made a considerable impact on Victorian readers.

In his own lifetime, Blake’s poetry was scarcely known. Sir Walter Scott , by contrast, was thought of as a major poet for his vigorous and evocative verse narratives The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and Marmion (1808). Other verse writers were also highly esteemed. The Elegiac Sonnets (1784) of Charlotte Smith and the Fourteen Sonnets (1789) of William Lisle Bowles were received with enthusiasm by Coleridge. Thomas Campbell is now chiefly remembered for his patriotic lyrics such as “Ye Mariners of England” and “The Battle of Hohenlinden” (1807) and for the critical preface to his Specimens of the British Poets (1819); Samuel Rogers was known for his brilliant table talk (published 1856, after his death, as Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers ), as well as for his exquisite but exiguous poetry. Another admired poet of the day was Thomas Moore , whose Irish Melodies began to appear in 1808. His highly colored narrative Lalla Rookh : An Oriental Romance (1817) and his satirical poetry were also immensely popular. Charlotte Smith was not the only significant woman poet in this period. Helen Maria Williams’s Poems (1786), Ann Batten Cristall’s Poetical Sketches (1795), Mary Robinson’s Sappho and Phaon (1796), and Mary Tighe’s Psyche (1805) all contain notable work.

Robert Southey was closely associated with Wordsworth and Coleridge and was looked upon as a prominent member, with them, of the “ Lake school ” of poetry. His originality is best seen in his ballads and his nine “English Eclogues,” three of which were first published in the 1799 volume of his Poems with a prologue explaining that these verse sketches of contemporary life bore “no resemblance to any poems in our language.” His “Oriental” narrative poems Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) and The Curse of Kehama (1810) were successful in their own time, but his fame is based on his prose work—the Life of Nelson (1813), the History of the Peninsular War (1823–32), and his classic formulation of the children’s tale “The Three Bears.”

George Crabbe wrote poetry of another kind: his sensibility, his values, much of his diction, and his heroic couplet verse form belong to the 18th century. He differs from the earlier Augustans, however, in his subject matter, concentrating on realistic, unsentimental accounts of the life of the poor and the middle classes. He shows considerable narrative gifts in his collections of verse tales (in which he anticipates many short-story techniques) and great powers of description. His antipastoral The Village appeared in 1783. After a long silence, he returned to poetry with The Parish Register (1807), The Borough (1810), Tales in Verse (1812), and Tales of the Hall (1819), which gained him great popularity in the early 19th century.

Literary Theory and Criticism

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Romantic Poetry

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on February 16, 2021 • ( 0 )

The classic essays on romanticism tend not to define the term but to survey the manifold and unsuccessful attempts to define it. In English poetry, however, we can give a more or less historical definition: Romanticism is a movement that can be dated as beginning with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge ’s Lyrical Ballads of 1798 and that is still continuing today, despite reactions and countermovements which begin almost immediately and which are highly relevant to any consideration of Victorian and modern literature. (Although romanticism includes all of William Blake’s major poetry, beginning more than a decade prior to Lyrical Ballads, Blake’s obscurity limited his influence on other major writers for a good half century.)

Paradoxically, though, these reactions can themselves be regarded as highly romantic in nature— partly, perhaps, because one very general but still useful early (1825) definition of romanticism is, in the words of the French dramatist and politician Ludovic Vitet (1802–73), “Protestantism in arts and letters” (quoted in Furst, European Romanticism ). Protestantism was a protest against the fetters of the past (even romanticism itself)—against rule and convention, as Vitet realized—and therefore was also an analogue to the Protestant Reformation. In this sense, romanticism is the analogue in the literary sphere of the freedom brought by the Enlightenment in the political, moral, and philosophical world—according to Vitet, “the right to enjoy what gives pleasure, to be moved by what moves one, to admire what seems admirable, even when by virtue of well and duly consecrated principles it could be proved that one ought not to admire, nor be moved, nor enjoy.” Wordsworth, too, spoke of his object in Lyrical Ballads as giving pleasure to his readers, rather than conforming to rules: “There will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction . . . because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry.” That pleasure is Protestant in its deference to the judgment and poetic conscience of the individual soul: “[T]his necessity of producing immediate pleasure . . . is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because it is not formal, but indirect; . . . it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves” (preface to Lyrical Ballads , 1800).

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818

Romanticism is therefore to be defined negatively, perhaps, as a principled protest against classicism. Since the French were the earliest to identify it as a movement, we can recur to the incisive definition one of the great French romantics, Victor Hugo, who (in the preface to his 1830 play Hernani ) wrote, “Romanticism, so often badly defined, is . . . viewed wholly under its militant aspect, nothing but liberalism in literature . . . a literary liberty [which] is the daughter of political liberty.” The philosopher John Stuart Mill was one of the earliest purveyors of the term in English, but again he was describing French literature when he wrote in 1837:

The stateliness and conventional decorum of old French poetic and dramatic literature, gave place to a licence which made free scope for genius and also for absurdity, and let in new forms of the beautiful was well as many of the hideous. Literature shook off its chains, and used its liberty like a galley-slave broke loose; while painting and sculpture passed from one unnatural extreme to another, and the stiff school was succeeded by the spasmodic. This insurrection against the old traditions of classicism was called romanticism: and now, when the mass of rubbish to which it had given birth has produced another oscillation in opinion the reverse way, one inestimable result seems to have survived it—that life and human feeling may now, in France, be painted with as much liberty as they may be discussed, and, when painted truly, with approval.

Mill’s account shows the extent to which romanticism was central to Victorian literary attitudes, even as the heyday of what came to be called high romanticism came to an end in England with the beginning of the Victorian period. Indeed, the Victorian parody of the continued influence of romanticism identified what it called the “spasmodic school” of poetry.

These quotations show the extent to which romanticism is regarded as a revolutionary rejection of the past—of Mill’s classicism—which might be regarded as the literary equivalent of the French Revolution. Indeed, the first generation of English romantics were admirers of the French Revolution before its descent into destruction and terror. For this reason as well, the romantics saw Napoleon Bonaparte as a Promethean figure who promised liberty but ended up besotted with despotic power. Wordsworth, who celebrated the death of the French revolutionary Robespierre in The Prelude, nevertheless began that work with an ode to liberty. For the English romantics, that liberty was at once a break with Enlightenment rationalism and (as we have seen) a continuation of the Enlightenment’s intensely humanistic project of rejecting religious superstition and arbitrary law on behalf of the human soul’s freedom and primacy.

It is important not to make the mistake that some critics fall into of thinking of romanticism as essentially an irrational egotism. Romanticism is far more the inheritor of Enlightenment ideas than their displacer. It shares with the Enlightenment an intense focus on the powers of the human mind. For Enlightenment philosophers, that focus was often on its rational and analytic powers, whence the flowering of modern science. But such Enlightenment figures as the philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau paid equal or greater attention to the mind’s subjective experience. Rousseau’s Confessions (1769) as well as his novel Julie (1761) were forerunners of intense influences on (respectively) such works as Wordsworth’s The Prelude , Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage , and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s T he Triumph of Life . In Immanuel Kant and the German idealists, and in Coleridge, much of whose work is uncomfortably close to plagiarism of the idealists, the relationship between its objective and subjective powers is central to a philosophical account of the mind. Kant saw that relationship forming in the faculty of judgment, of which aesthetic judgment was the most vivid example. The half-creation, half-perception of the world which takes place in judgment is the theme of romanticism, explicitly in such poems as Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Shelley’s “Mont Blanc.” Sometimes the difference between subjective and objective attitudes manifested itself as a sense of self-division within the soul, a sense that could be traced back to the philosophy of John Locke (1632– 1704), which was repugnant but therefore powerfully influential, to such figures as Blake and Wordsworth.

Self-division, solitude, subjective longing—all of these are aspects of the subjectivity which romanticism took as its starting point and theme (in part inheriting it from the more sentimental mode of 18th-century sensibility, though sensibility was far more an overtly social phenomenon than romanticism). Because of its intense interest in subjectivity as well as its rejection of superstition, it is possible to see romanticism as a kind of religious sensibility without religious belief. The soul, or self, experiences itself as fallen in a fallen world (often represented as the world of childhood or the world most closely present in childhood). In Romanticism, by rejecting the doctrines of religion—that the biblical Fall is punishment for some derogation from a state of grace—the soul also rejects the consolations of religion; accordingly, it has no hope of salvation except within itself and its own experience. That salvation is therefore primarily aesthetic and philosophical (the distinction between the two is one of emphasis, which is why so many romantic poems are so intensely philosophical). The romantics took to heart Satan’s claim in John Milton’s great 17th-century work Paradise Lost (the poem most essential to the English romantics) that “The mind is its own place and in itself / Can make a Heaven of hell, a Hell of heaven (1, l. 254).” Our sense of ourselves as fallen, as having a destiny and home “with infinity,” as Wordsworth says, makes the finite world a negative measure of our own subjective intensity. When this intensity is represented as a claim to greatness of soul, it can look egotistical; but what counts is the intensity of experience measured by the failure as well as by the intermittent success of the outside world at matching it.

This intermittent success tends to come with a sense of the grandeur of nature, which is why so much great romantic poetry is about nature in its most intense aspects: those of beauty, solitude, and most of all, the sublime. Nature’s wildness, partly imaged in ruined castles and abbeys, which had been a staple of gothic fiction in the 18th century were particularly appropriate settings for romantic thought. But nature is itself a projection—it is the place the mind makes of it, as in the last two lines of Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” where it is the human mind’s imaginings that transfigure vacancy into silence and solitude.

The general mode of a romantic poem is one of crisis—a crisis that leads to its own solution. The very fact of crisis is a sign that the intensity of feeling and thought at risk is still there. Romantic poets worry about the loss of intensity that seems the inevitable course of human experience, but they reimagine that loss of intensity as the intensity of loss. Loss becomes, as the 20th-century literary critic Paul de Man put it somewhat skeptically, “shadowed gain.” The gain for the soul is in its apprehension of its own capacity to measure its losses, and therefore to rise above them. Loss within the soul comes to be figured as the loss of poetic vocation. The poetry inspired by this loss is a sign that poetic vocation is intensified in its own undoing, rather than dissipated— for a while at least. Romanticism reimagined poetry as an intense analysis of human subjectivity, and in doing so it lent splendor to the universal human experience of loss and decline. What more can poetry do?

Bibliography Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York: Norton, 1973. Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961. ———, ed. Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism. New York: Norton, 1970. Brown, Marshall. Preromanticism. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991. Deane, Seamus. French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, 1789–1832. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. De Man, Paul. The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984. Furst, Lilian, ed. European Romanticism: Self-Definition: An Anthology. London: Methuen, 1980. Lovejoy, Arthur. “On the Discrimination of Romanticisms.” PMLA (journal of the Modern Language Association) 39, no. 2 (June 1924): 229–253. McGann, Jerome. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Mill, John Stuart. “Armand Carrel.” In Dissertations and Discussions. Vol. 1. 237–308. Boston: Holt, 1882. Quinney, Laura. The Poetics of Disappointment: Wordsworth to Ashbery. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999.

Romanticism in England

Romanticism in France

Romanticism in America

Romantic Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism of William Wordsworth

Literary Criticism of S.T. Coleridge

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

• Romanticism

Théodore Gericault

Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct

Alfred Dedreux (1810–1860) as a Child

The Start of the Race of the Riderless Horses

Horace Vernet

Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Gericault (1791–1824)

Inundated Ruins of a Monastery

Karl Blechen

Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds

John Constable

Eugène Delacroix

Royal Tiger

Stormy Coast Scene after a Shipwreck

French Painter

Mother and Child by the Sea

Johan Christian Dahl

The Natchez

Wanderer in the Storm

Julius von Leypold

The Abduction of Rebecca

Jewish Woman of Algiers Seated on the Ground

Théodore Chassériau

The Virgin Adoring the Host

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Ovid among the Scythians

Kathryn Calley Galitz Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. Though often posited in opposition to Neoclassicism , early Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques Louis David’s studio, including Baron Antoine Jean Gros, Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson, and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. This blurring of stylistic boundaries is best expressed in Ingres’ Apotheosis of Homer and Eugène Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus (both Museé du Louvre, Paris), which polarized the public at the Salon of 1827 in Paris. While Ingres’ work seemingly embodied the ordered classicism of David in contrast to the disorder and tumult of Delacroix, in fact both works draw from the Davidian tradition but each ultimately subverts that model, asserting the originality of the artist—a central notion of Romanticism.

In Romantic art, nature—with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes—offered an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. The violent and terrifying images of nature conjured by Romantic artists recall the eighteenth-century aesthetic of the Sublime. As articulated by the British statesman Edmund Burke in a 1757 treatise and echoed by the French philosopher Denis Diderot a decade later, “all that stuns the soul, all that imprints a feeling of terror, leads to the sublime.” In French and British painting of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the recurrence of images of shipwrecks ( 2003.42.56 ) and other representations of man’s struggle against the awesome power of nature manifest this sensibility. Scenes of shipwrecks culminated in 1819 with Théodore Gericault’s strikingly original Raft of the Medusa (Louvre), based on a contemporary event. In its horrifying explicitness, emotional intensity, and conspicuous lack of a hero, The Raft of the Medusa became an icon of the emerging Romantic style. Similarly, J. M. W. Turner’s 1812 depiction of Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps (Tate, London), in which the general and his troops are dwarfed by the overwhelming scale of the landscape and engulfed in the swirling vortex of snow, embodies the Romantic sensibility in landscape painting. Gericault also explored the Romantic landscape in a series of views representing different times of day; in Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct ( 1989.183 ), the dramatic sky, blasted tree, and classical ruins evoke a sense of melancholic reverie.

Another facet of the Romantic attitude toward nature emerges in the landscapes of John Constable , whose art expresses his response to his native English countryside. For his major paintings, Constable executed full-scale sketches, as in a view of Salisbury Cathedral ( 50.145.8 ); he wrote that a sketch represents “nothing but one state of mind—that which you were in at the time.” When his landscapes were exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1824, critics and artists embraced his art as “nature itself.” Constable’s subjective, highly personal view of nature accords with the individuality that is a central tenet of Romanticism.

This interest in the individual and subjective—at odds with eighteenth-century rationalism—is mirrored in the Romantic approach to portraiture. Traditionally, records of individual likeness, portraits became vehicles for expressing a range of psychological and emotional states in the hands of Romantic painters. Gericault probed the extremes of mental illness in his portraits of psychiatric patients, as well as the darker side of childhood in his unconventional portrayals of children. In his portrait of Alfred Dedreux ( 41.17 ), a young boy of about five or six, the child appears intensely serious, more adult than childlike, while the dark clouds in the background convey an unsettling, ominous quality.

Such explorations of emotional states extended into the animal kingdom, marking the Romantic fascination with animals as both forces of nature and metaphors for human behavior. This curiosity is manifest in the sketches of wild animals done in the menageries of Paris and London in the 1820s by artists such as Delacroix, Antoine-Louis Barye, and Edwin Landseer. Gericault depicted horses of all breeds—from workhorses to racehorses—in his work. Lord Byron’s 1819 tale of Mazeppa tied to a wild horse captivated Romantic artists from Delacroix to Théodore Chassériau, who exploited the violence and passion inherent in the story. Similarly, Horace Vernet, who exhibited two scenes from Mazeppa in the Salon of 1827 (both Musée Calvet, Avignon), also painted the riderless horse race that marked the end of the Roman Carnival, which he witnessed during his 1820 visit to Rome. His oil sketch ( 87.15.47 ) captures the frenetic energy of the spectacle, just before the start of the race. Images of wild, unbridled animals evoked primal states that stirred the Romantic imagination.

Along with plumbing emotional and behavioral extremes, Romantic artists expanded the repertoire of subject matter, rejecting the didacticism of Neoclassical history painting in favor of imaginary and exotic subjects. Orientalism and the worlds of literature stimulated new dialogues with the past as well as the present. Ingres’ sinuous odalisques ( 38.65 ) reflect the contemporary fascination with the exoticism of the harem, albeit a purely imagined Orient, as he never traveled beyond Italy. In 1832, Delacroix journeyed to Morocco, and his trip to North Africa prompted other artists to follow. In 1846, Chassériau documented his visit to Algeria in notebooks filled with watercolors and drawings, which later served as models for paintings done in his Paris studio ( 64.188 ). Literature offered an alternative form of escapism. The novels of Sir Walter Scott, the poetry of Lord Byron, and the drama of Shakespeare transported art to other worlds and eras. Medieval England is the setting of Delacroix’s tumultuous Abduction of Rebecca ( 03.30 ), which illustrates an episode from Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe .

In its stylistic diversity and range of subjects, Romanticism defies simple categorization. As the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1846, “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling.”

Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “Romanticism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Brookner, Anita. Romanticism and Its Discontents . New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux; : , 2000.

Honour, Hugh. Romanticism . New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Additional Essays by Kathryn Calley Galitz

• Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ The Legacy of Jacques Louis David (1748–1825) .” (October 2004)
• Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) .” (May 2009)
• Galitz, Kathryn Calley. “ The French Academy in Rome .” (October 2003)

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Romantic Age in English Literature

The late 18th century through the middle of the 19th century, known as the Romantic Period in English literature, was a pivotal time marked by a significant shift in socioeconomic, philosophical, and artistic perspectives. The Enlightenment ideas and the rapid industrialization triggered an intense reaction that gave rise to this era.

The Romantics defended the superiority of passion, individuality, and imagination in opposition to the Enlightenment’s focus on reason, rationality, and empiricism. They looked for inspiration and insight by delving into the depths of human emotion, the mysteries of nature, and the capacity of the human imagination. This was a shift from the Enlightenment’s belief that reason and science were the main forces behind advancement in society.

Table of Contents

Historical and Cultural Background

The cultural and historical context of the Romantic Period in English literature was greatly affected by a number of important factors that helped to define this period.

The worldview of the Romantics was significantly influenced by the French Revolution and political instability. The turbulent events of the French Revolution in the late 18th century inspired political idealism, optimism, and revolt throughout Europe. The Romantics, which included writers like William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, were profoundly influenced by the revolutionary spirit and saw in it a chance for societal transformation and the emancipation of the individual from repressive structures. However, they also had to deal with the violence and despair that frequently followed revolutionary fervor, giving rise to complicated and even contradictory perspectives on political change.

Read More: Enlightenment in English Literature

Romanticism ‘s strong affinity for the sublime and the natural world developed in response to the era’s rapid industrialization and urbanization. The natural world was valued by the Romantics as a source of creativity, comfort, and spiritual regeneration. They saw the natural world as both a haven for the human spirit and a window towards the divine. The idea of the sublime, which included both the stupendous majesty of nature and the overwhelming strength of human emotions, also emerged as a major theme in Romantic literature. John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were two authors who explored the sublime in their writings, creating sensations of both transcendence and dread.

Read More: Romanticism in English Literature

The Romantic Period was greatly influenced by technological development and socioeconomic transformations, notably the rapid industrialization of society. Although these changes helped in economic development, they also brought about social inequality, labor exploitation, and environmental deterioration. The Romantics sharply criticized these unfavorable effects and frequently illustrated how industrialization caused alienation from and a loss of connection to nature. Their works represented a yearning for a life that was less complicated, more peaceful, and in harmony with the cycles of nature.

Literature of the Romantic Period

The literature of the Romantic Period was distinguished by a wide variety of subjects and genres, which captured the significant social and cultural transformations of the time.

Poetry of Nature and Emotion: The praise of the natural world and the exploration of profound human emotions were two of the most notable and enduring features of Romantic literature. William Wordsworth , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and John Keats were among the poets of this time who focused on the splendor and grandeur of the natural world. They regarded nature as a way to connect with more profound emotional and spiritual truths as well as a source of aesthetic inspiration. Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” perfectly encapsulates this romanticism that is rooted in nature, while Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” explores the mystical and surreal facets of nature. In contrast, Keats wrote odes that praised love, beauty, and mortality, as shown in poems like “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

Read More: Coleridge’s concept of imagination and fancy

Gothic Literature

As a result of the Romantic Era’s interest in the enigmatic, supernatural, and darker facets of human nature, Gothic literature developed into a unique and distinctive literary style. With frequent blending of the real and the supernatural, gothic literature tried to explore the eerie, the macabre, and the weird.

The ideas and aesthetic of Gothic literature from the Romantic Era are best exemplified in two classic works. The revolutionary book “ Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, which was first published in 1818, examines the effects of scientific experimentation as well as the urge to go beyond natural limitations. Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” published in 1897, introduced readers to the iconic vampire Count Dracula and established many of the tropes associated with vampire lore. Immortality, sexuality, and the conflict between reason and the supernatural are some of the topics that are explored in the novel.

Prose and Essays

The prose and essays of the Romantic Era were distinguished by a rich tapestry of political and philosophical writings that captured the intellectual fervor of the time. The works of authors like Thomas De Quincey and William Hazlitt, who provided profound insights into the intellectual and political currents of their period, made a substantial contribution to this genre.

Read More: John Keats as a romantic poet

Thomas De Quincey is most known for his autobiographical work “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” in which he explored the nature of consciousness, dreams, and the human mind in addition to revealing his struggles with addiction. The essays of De Quincey were prime examples of Romanticism ‘s preoccupation with the inner workings of the human soul. The prolific essayist William Hazlitt, on the other hand, wrote essays like “Table-Talk” and “The Spirit of the Age,” which offered scathing comments on the literary figures and cultural trends of the day. Hazlitt became a recognized figure in both literary and political circles due to his essays which were distinguished by their eloquence and impassioned engagement with the events of the day.

Key Themes and Characteristics

The Romantic Period’s focus on individualism and the unrestrained power of the human imagination was one of its most important and enduring literary themes. Romantic authors fought for the idea that every person has a special inner world of emotions, creativity, and imagination that should be honored and expressed.

Romantic literature frequently explored the complexity of love, passion, sorrow, and wonder by delving into the depths of human emotions. John Keats’ poetry , for example, is a prime example of the Romantic movement’s preoccupation with the depth of human emotion. The Romantic confidence in the capacity of the individual imagination to handle life’s difficulties was typified by Keats’ discovery of the “negative capability,” the capacity to embrace doubt and uncertainty.

Read More: John Keats concept of negative capability

The Romantics also praised the power of unrestrained imagination and creativity as transformational forces that could shape the world and inspire social reform. For instance, William Blake’s poetry has a visionary aspect and envisioned a universe in which the human mind might go beyond the bounds of the real world.

Idealization of Nature

The Romantic Era was characterized by a deep and idealized relationship to nature, with poets and writers of the time praising nature as a source of creativity, consolation, and spiritual rejuvenation. This idealization of nature was a powerful response to the era’s rapid urbanization and industrialization.

Nature as a source of inspiration and solace: Romantic authors found in nature an endless fountain of inspiration for their imagination. They were inspired by the beauty, wonder, and amazement of the natural world. Poets like William Wordsworth saw nature as a living thing with profound significance rather than merely a picturesque backdrop. His well-known poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” examines the healing potential of nature and how it might help people feel more connected to a higher, more transcendent reality. Similar to this, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” investigates the spiritual aspects of nature by using the natural world as a setting for ethical and metaphysical exploration.

Rebellion Against Convention

The romantic era witnessed authors and artists resist against convention by criticizing society norms and institutions while promoting nonconformity and artistic independence.

Critique of societal norms and institutions: Romantics had an extremely critical view of the institutions and societal norms of their time. They questioned established religion’s restrictions, rigid social systems, and restrictions on personal freedom. For instance, Lord Byron’s poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” reflected a  mood of discontent with the existing quo by expressing a sense of disappointment with the social and political order. The Romantics frequently disagreed with the established systems of society and expressed their dissatisfaction at the limitations imposed on free speech and creativity.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s writings exhibit this attitude of defiance against tradition, notably in his poem “Ode to the West Wind,” in which he yearns for the wind’s ability to “Make me thy Lyre, even as the forests are.” The Romantic ideal of a more emancipated and harmonious existence is reflected in Shelley’s demand for a peaceful coexistence with nature’s powers.

Notable Figures of the Romantic Period

William Wordsworth is often regarded as one of the foundational figures of the Romantic movement. His poems emphasized the importance of individual experience and emotions in artistic creation while praising the splendor and strength of nature. His work on the “Lyrical Ballads” with Samuel Taylor Coleridge is regarded as a turning point in Romantic literature, and his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” continues to be one of the most celebrated examples of the Romantic idealization of nature.

Wordsworth’s close friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge is renowned for his inventive and lyrical poetry. A masterwork of Romantic literature, his poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” explores themes of guilt, atonement, and the supernatural. Coleridge’s writings also explored the fields of philosophy and literary criticism, significantly enhancing the Romantic Era’s intellectual landscape.

Lord Byron was a well-known poet and leader of the Romantic movement. Byron, who was famous for his audacious and ferocious poems, frequently explored themes of love, revolt, and independence. Both his narrative poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and his dramatic poem “Manfred” demonstrate his connection with Romantic ideals of individual independence and criticism of social norms.

John Keats had a profound impact on Romantic poetry despite having a brief life. His odes, such as “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” are praised for their examination of beauty, death, and the sublime force of art.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the Romantic Period in English literature is seen as a transformative and significant period that had a profound impact on both the literary world and the larger cultural consciousness. The writings of renowned figures like Wordsworth, Coleridge , Shelley, Byron, and Keats during this time were characterized by the flourishing of important topics like the celebration of individualism and imagination, the idealization of nature, revolt against convention, and the search for personal independence. The legacy of the Romantic Era stands as a tribute to the enduring human spirit, the limitless power of the imagination, and the ageless pursuit of freedom and self-expression. It is a significant and cherished chapter in the ever-evolving history of English literature and culture because its themes and values are still relevant in modern literature and art.

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71 Touching Love Paragraphs for Her

Last Updated on August 9, 2024

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Love is the greatest of all human emotions. Indeed, he who has a girlfriend has one of life’s most precious possessions. However, keeping a girlfriend demands that you remain true and sensitive to her needs. Since you are the most cherished person in her life, your girl deserves your unrequited love and undivided attention.

You may consider spoiling her with romantic gifts or taking her on vacation to enchanting faraway destinations. While all these are invaluable in making the relationship grow fonder, nothing delights your girlfriend more than a love message that expresses how passionately you value her. And the convention is that the longer the message, the better it captures your deep sense of appreciation.

Love Paragraphs for Her

Let’s explore some of the cutest love messages you can send to your cute, little flower to strengthen the bonds of love that already exists between the two of you.

1. A day that is void of your voice is to mean an incomplete one. For with your voice comes the soul melting laughter which is all I need to have a great and happy day. I hope mine makes you feel the same way. I love you my Cherie.

2. Before I met you, I didn’t think love was for me. It was something other people had and felt. Something in movies and in TV shows. It felt more like a wish I had then something real. Now that I’m with you, love is so much more tangible. It’s something I can reach out and touch. It’s so much more than a wish or a hope (though it does give me hope, for so many things), it’s the very real, wonderful person I wake up to. The warm hand next to mine, the brush of hair against my cheek. I love you and because of that love, I love so much more than you. I love myself and the world in a way I never thought possible. You’ve made that possible for me. You’ve made everything possible.

3. Even when we know that nothing in this world is eternal, I know deep down that you and I will live together till eternity. I will love you forever, and I will never fall out of love with you. I am always here to be your lover until the end of time .

4. Every day is a celebration of having you in my life. I thank God for making it possible for us to cross the path right from the beginning because that was where my life gained so much impact on your love. I can’t love you enough because you are a precious jewel in my world.

5. Everything you do… The way you eat, the way you smile, the way my name rolls off of your tongue… That all is what keeps me going. It gives me so much joy to watch you be you. I would never give my attention to anyone else because I love giving it to you. The day when you were born, it was raining. Actually, it wasn’t raining itself, but heaven was crying for losing the most beautiful angel!

6. I can create another odyssey describing my love for you. You have such a profound influence in my life that I cannot erase the memories of you even if I live for a million years. I am lucky to be part of your life. I will love you till my last breath!

7. I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate having you in my life. For helping me through the bad times and being there to help me celebrate the good times, I cherish all of the moments that we share together. There aren’t enough words in the dictionary for me to tell you how glad I am to have you in my life. I am so lucky to have you by my side. Everything you do for me never goes unnoticed. I don’t know what I did to deserve someone as wonderful as you, but I am eternally grateful to have your love, support, and affection. Thank you for being you, and for having me by your side.

8. Life offers many choices to make, but loving you is the only thing I wish to do. I want to spend my entire existence showing you how much you have impacted my life. Hand-in-hand, I will prove to you that my life is better with you in it. For the sake of your love, I am ready to face whatever it takes to make you smile at all times. I will love you until I am no more because your love is my greatest wealth.

9. Love is not something that you can express in words. Love is something that is expressed by actions and felt with the heart. I don’t know how much loved I make you feel but trust me, dear, you are the most precious thing in my life. I love you!

10. My most beloved woman. Without you, I do not exist. I need you and you alone to survive the storms of life. You are such a perfect woman for me. I could barely meet someone better than you. You’re the meaning of a great experience, and I can’t love you less.

11. My world feels dark when you’re not here. Even when I’m out under a cloudless sky, it feels like there’s a haze over everything. Before you, the world was filled with so many lights, streetlights, stars, the moon , and the sun. Now it feels like you are the brightest light in my life. It would explain why I feel so warm around you, how you provide me with the energy and the strength to persevere through my darkest hours. You also shine brilliantly enough that I know I’ll always be able to find my way back to you.

12. One paragraph is not enough for me to tell you just how much you mean to me. It would take me thousands of pages to tell you just how much I love you. If I spent the rest of eternity writing, I still could not accurately portray how amazing you are and all of the reasons why I love you .

13. Our love is something that is truly special and there is no other love like ours in the world. I feel as if I have won the lottery with you, someone who is so special and magical, who makes my life and my world a thousand times better just by being there. When I look at you, I know that I have truly hit the jackpot. All you have to do in order to warm my heart is to be the loving, caring person that you are. Together, we can do so much and help each other realize our dreams because we truly have a love that is special.

14. Seeing you every day is a blessing because my heart bubbles with excitement when anything reminds me of you. I am filled with great joy whenever the thought of you crosses my mind. I do not understand why, but I can’t stop looking at you. I admire your beauty a lot, and it is one thing that strikes me. You own my heart, and I want your heart forever.

15. Sometimes when I look at the ocean or an especially large mountain range, I feel overwhelmed and small, but in a good way. It’s comforting to know there’s something out there bigger than I am. Something large and enduring that has lasted through the ages. Through harsh weather, storms and droughts, through changes in history and climate , the ocean keeps on rolling and the mountains keep on standing tall. When I think of you and our love and how I feel about you, I feel the same way. My love for you doesn’t make me feel small though, it makes me feel powerful and new. I look at you and I know that I will love you forever, through storms and droughts, through all the changes that will undoubtedly come our way. I will love you forever. There’s no changing that.

16. The first day we met was the best day of my life. I found the source of life, joy, and happiness. You are my inspiration, and I love you beyond words can explain, baby. I know that the world is waiting for our union. It will be the best thing that has ever happened to me.

17. Watching you walk across a room is the greatest gift. The way you move is so graceful and easy. The way you smile makes me feel at peace . Knowing you’re walking towards me is a feeling so hard to describe. It’s like coming home, a comfort, only the home is coming to me. I will never know such love, such peace, as you. You’re my home.

18. Whenever we are apart, have it in mind that you are always in my heart. I take the memories we create with me everywhere I go. I miss you , my love and I want you to know that gaining your appreciation is my most significant feat.

19. When I first saw you, I was attracted by your beautiful face and your charming smile. But it was the beauty of your heart that I fell for. I found an angel in you that is more amazing than what’s visible from outside.

20. When you are around me, my world turns around, and I feel your passion swell up inside my heart. I love you because when I lose control of myself, you pull closer. You are the sun in my sky, without you I’d be in darkness. I will love you until there is no love left in the world.

21. Words may fail to express how much I love you but my deeds will never fail to show my love for you. I loved you yesterday, love you today and will love you until there’s no tomorrow!

22. You are more beautiful than a summer sunset on the ocean horizon. You are more breathtaking than the lush landscape on a mountain. You shine brighter than the stars in the country sky. You are more alluring than any song that was ever sung. I had not seen what the real meaning of beauty was until I found you.

23. You are my match made in heaven. There is never a second where you aren’t there to lift me up when I need you to. I am so fortunate to have crossed paths with you in the beginning. It has brought us to this beautiful point in our lives. You are everything I could ever want in a woman. I will never want anything or anyone else. That I can promise.

24. You are the sunshine that fades all the darkness in my life. You are my road to redemption. I have never loved someone so deeply than you. I love you more than I can say. Nothing can ever change my love for you!

25. Your love attacked my body and melted my soul. If ever two were one, then I plus you will be one. Your love gives me delight than a whole bag of gold. I will love you forever.

26. Your love makes my world glow. It makes the sunrise, the winds to blow and the rain to fall. This love is beautiful because even if the sun rises, the wind blows and the rain falls on me, my love will forever be yours.

27. Your love sneaked up sleeves. Without any direction, it tiptoes gently, slowly and straight to my heart. I never bargained for its dominant grip on my heart. Now I’m helplessly under your control. You must be a magician because I don’t want to get your love off my heart.

28. Your never-ending love was all I needed to make my dark world glow. Your love is so fascinating because you gathered and mended my broken heart together into one piece with your sweet love. My purpose was undefined, but I am gingered to keep living. You gave my life meaning. You loved me until I can stand to live another day. I love you, and I will always do, until the end of time.

29. You’ve lit a fire in me. It’s a passion that grows with each passing day. Just when I think I get used to my love for you, you’ll do something small and amazing. Maybe you’ll make me laugh, or say something so smart it makes me see the world in a new way, and suddenly there it is again—that rush of emotion, of love, that comes over me so swiftly it’s like a wildfire in my soul. I hope you know how much you mean to me, how much I love you, and how excited I am to walk through this life with you.

30. You’re my best friend. The person I can tell all my secrets to, the first person I want to talk to when I wake up, and last person I want to talk to before I drift off to sleep. When something good happens to me, you’re the first person I want to tell. When I’m troubled by something or if I get bad news, you’re the one I go to for comfort and support. But you’re so much more to me than a friend, you’re the love of my life. You’re my friend, my lover, my comfort and my strength. I am so lucky to have you. I just wanted you to know how happy I am to have you in my life.

31. You are my happiness the only treasure I adore with a complete passion. Since the day you came into my world; my life has never remained the same. You brought an endless smile to my face, amazing joy to my heart, baby I love you!

32. My love for you has no beginning and no end. It is cyclical, like life. It is ever-flowing, like the oceans. [And} It is as boundless as the sky and as vast as the universe. When I see your face, I see my past, my present, my future . When I hold your hand I feel everything inside of me expand. You are my everything. I will love you forever.

33. Because of you, I have understood how powerful loving is. You truly made me realize the real meaning of romantic love. Thank you for being wonderful, understanding, and loving to me. You always inspire me to be better. You are my life, baby.

34. I thought that loving someone wholeheartedly and feeling the same amount of affection only happens in movies until I met you. Thank you for all the care and appreciation you have given me. I cannot help but wonder what I ever did to deserve you. I am the luckiest man in the world because I have you.

35. Your beauty is like a ray of sunshine that can bring brightness anywhere. Your beautiful smile never fails to make my heart melt . My dear, thank you for being a fantastic person inside and out. You are the best person in my life now.

36. I know I might not be the perfect man, but you know that I will do everything and anything for you. You are my everything. You are a blessing, so I am beyond grateful for sending someone as wonderful as you.

37. You came into my life when I least expected it. I never imagined that someone like you can make my world a better place. I am thankful that you came into my life, babe. Each moment that we shared is a memory I treasure . You are the most important person in my life.

38. I believe that meeting and being together are not accidents. Even before we met, I knew that our love story had been written. I thank the Lord from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to meet you. I hope that you feel every day how important you are to me.

39. I knew someone should have warned me from falling deeply in love with you. Now, I feel my soul is connected to yours that I will be very lost if I did not love you. What I feel for you is something genuine. Your happiness is my happiness, and your sadness is my sadness.

40. I find your eyes mesmerizing and powerful. When I look at them, I feel a lot of peace, happiness, and hope. I guess you make me feel alive. The joy I feel with you is always with me. Because of the peacefulness, I feel like I am in heaven when you are beside me.

41. My darling, no one brings as much happiness to my life as you. In your company, I find love that I have never known before. I can’t imagine what my life would be without you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You have given me so much love and encouragement that I don’t think I will be able to return all that to you. You have been lighting up the dark and bringing joy to my heart. When I am with you I feel alive and strong.

42. Honey, you know that with you by my side, my day seems brighter and full of love. When I first saw you, I just wanted to be with you, to hug and kiss you until we both ran out of breath. I must be the luckiest man in the world because I have your love. Every time I think about you, I can’t help but smile. You’re the reason I smile all the time now. I love you, Honey. I heard that you cherish everything between you and me. That’s really great. I never thought I would have such a lasting influence on you.

43. I love us. We’re the cutest. I know that sounds braggy, but I mean it when I say that I think we make the perfect couple. We understand each other. We listen to each other. We inspire each other to become stronger with each passing day. Happy anniversary . I cannot wait to spend another year alongside you, because there is no place I would rather be. You’re stuck with me. You better remember that!

44. I know I am bad at expressing my love but I want to do this. You have changed me for real. You have changed something inside me, I don’t think I was used to this before I met you. I was so lost in my thoughts, you have made me realise the power of my thoughts. You have had the most magical effect on my life. When I am with you I don’t think about anything else but your love. I want to truly confess my love to you, you have been the most important part of my life and will remain in time. I truly love you!

45. What we have together is unique. It is a special bond that is strong and unbreakable. We can make it through anything we encounter and we will only grow stronger from the trials we face together. Together, we are stronger. Being with you has made me a better person and I can’t believe that I found you. Ever since I met you, I never want to let you go. The attraction that you and I share is one that is so intense and I never want to be separated from you.

46. There are a thousand ways to say I love you around the world, but only one way to prove it and that is by actions. You have proved that you love me unconditionally time and again. You were that one person who was by my side when all the world was against me. I have known ever since that day that you were the one for me. I try to love you and take care of you as much and as well as I can. I hope you know that I have the best intentions always, so forgive me if I ever hurt you or caused you pain. I love you for now until forever and will never leave your side.

47. My life would have been so different had you not been there with me. You have filled every corner of my heart with your love. You have showered me with so much care and affection that I feel I must have done something right in my life to deserve you.

48. When you hold my hand, when you kiss me, and when you hug me, I feel like I am the most fortunate person in this world. There is something so magical about the love we both have for each other because it brings me immense joy. I am glad that our paths crossed and we fell in love.

49. Just a little reminder that when I am with you, I wish that time passes more slowly, because I want to make the most of every moment I live with you. You are the most special present from the Almighty, and I am fortunate that you are mine. I promise to love you till eternity.

50. Until I met you, I had no idea that life could be full of happiness. There are so many new things and feelings that I have experienced with you. You brought into my life so much warmth and love that I have learned to live a life beyond my insecurities. You have become my biggest strength and my most precious asset. I will love you till my last breath, and I will always stand by you till eternity.

51. There is nothing I want more from this life because I have got you. The only wish I have is that I always have you with me in each moment, sharing all of my joys and sorrows. All I want is to start my day with your smile and end it with your warmth and love. I pray that our bond of love is always blessed and we stay together forever and ever.

52. I love you so much that you are always in my thoughts, no matter what I am doing. I always think about the beautiful memories we have created together, and I want to make many more lovely moments. You are the best thing that has happened to me, and I thank you for all the love you have brought into my life. Thank you for making me a fortunate man.

53. I was convinced that love is blind because someone as gorgeous as you fell in love with someone like me. But whatever be the case, I feel that I am truly fortunate that you have accepted my love. Thank you for being there for me and for being my rock. With you I feel like one in a million.

54.  Love of my life , You are the first thing I think of when I wake up and I’m looking forward to a life where I will wake up next to you, not needing to imagine you, because you will be sleeping right there next to me.

55. To my soulmate, I love you. I love you. I love you. I can never say those three words enough and unfortunately, I feel like you haven’t heard them at all lately. I’m sorry about that. I’ve been so overwhelmed with work that I haven’t had the time to give you much attention, but that will change soon. Do you know why? Because I love you. I love you. I love you.

56. I’ll love you like I’ve never been hurt. I’ll make you feel good like life has never been bad. It pays to be in love with you. I’ll give the only love I have in me to you. I’ll show you that my smile belongs to you, that my loyalty is with you and my dream is about you. I would fly a plane just to reach you faster, I’ll adorn you with the finest things in life. Because of you, I’ll make my life about love and whenever you say you love me I’ll fall in love with you all over again. My love, never listen to naysayers.

57. I wanna live on an island with you, protected from the intrusion of naysayers, an island of peace, with the serenity of our love flowing upon the waters. It’s not just a wish but it’s a dream I hope to make true with you, by building a home of peace filled with love, protected by the giant walls of trust, serenaded by my commitment all day and night. Baby, cause I love you.

58. This journey isn’t always easy, but you have stuck by my side from the first day. I no longer live for myself because everything you do gives my life purpose. I live for us and our deep connection.

59.  I asked God to send me the best girlfriend in the world, but He sent me a wonderful woman , who has become my true friend, a passionate lover, a caring partner, and the one without whom I cannot live! Thank you for being in my life.

60. I will always pray for that moment that I’ll be the last person you will kiss goodnight, hug at midnight when It’s cold, and wake up to a good morning hug. I want to exist for your love, because life has a different meaning with you in my life. I can’t wait to have you as my wife officially.

61. Some people are lucky enough to be able to put their emotions down on paper. Nevertheless, I will try my best to convey to you the depth of my ferocious love for you. The route of my life changed since the day I met you. You bring out the best in me. Your love gives me wings. Never have I ever been able to show gratitude for the small things in life; the warm showers, the scent of freshly washed linens, the aroma of oven-baked cookies, a food full of table, and everything in between. Thank you for blessing my soul. You may be a human being to the rest of the world, but to me, you are an angel. 

62. You are no ordinary person. You may think you’re ordinary, but that would also change if I told you the manner in which you have bewitched my mind, body, and soul. You are the reaping essence of spring’s first bloom. Your soft, soothing voice and beautiful smile make my day so much brighter. Your caressing touch makes me want to reside in your subtle embrace forever. Your presence in my life is what makes it lively and whole. You are wonderful; I love you.

63. I did not know about luck until you came into my life. But now I do. I am lucky to embrace you in my arms every night. Waking up next to you in the morning is the best feeling in the world. Your laughter is my kryptonite; I’d do anything for you to make you smile. Your teary-eyed face tugs on my heartstrings ever so badly. My world has started to revolve around you. I am so lucky to call you mine. 

64. Everything else becomes irrelevant when I’m with you. Your presence is so soothing, and I yearn for it everywhere I go. What is it about you that has made me lose interest in everything else? You have captured my attention, and I will forever be in awe of your charisma. I am so lucky to have you in my life.

65. Let’s go somewhere quiet, where the background noise of this world can not penetrate our silent whispers and ardent telepathy. I want us to rediscover ourselves and breathe life into this new chapter of our life where we’re madly in love with each other. I want to take you away from here and never see you cry again. Let’s start this new phase in life somewhere only we know. 

66. I never thought I could become someone’s need or desire. You make me feel so loved, so wanted. I love the way I feel when I’m with you. No barriers, no insecurities, no toxicity. Everything negative that this world gave to me, you took it away. You make my worries disappear. Thank you for being the light in my life.

67. I love our energy when we’re together. It’s like nothing else in the world matters. It’s just us, our romantic kisses, our tight cuddles, and immense laughter. I could have lived through a thousand life cycles but could have never found a woman as lovely as you. Thank you for enlightening my life forever. 

68. Everything that I used to do alone is a thousand times better when I do it with you. Sneaking in bed with our favorite snacks and watching decade-old movies has now become a weekend ritual I look forward to all week. I enjoy cooking with you, especially when we’re making comfort food to sit out the cold, rainy days. I love cuddling with you at night; our bodies wrapped around each tightly feels surreal. You’ve made my life a fantasy movie in motion. I love life because of you. I love you.

69. It’s not possible to give love when you’ve got none for yourself. You came into my life at an hour that was dark and melancholic. How you managed to make me fall in love with myself is a miracle. You’re a blessing in disguise, and I just want you to know that you have made my life absolutely amazing.

70. I just want you to know that your aura is so radiant. You have a beaming smile, and your face glows like you’ve been sent from the heavens above. Everywhere you go, you bring a smile to people’s faces. You’re not only beautiful from the outside but from within as well. Your soft corner for the needy and poor is such a rarity. You are indeed a blessing in disguise. You are my favorite muse and my most cherished possession. I love having you in my life.

71. It’s about time someone told you how amazing you are. I used to be a different person before I met you. I didn’t like myself, and I failed to see the good in others. With you, I see everything bright and colorful, even if it is sparse. My life no longer suffers in a monochrome filter, for you have filled it with every color in this universe. You brought me warmth when I was cold, you brought me love when I least deserved it, and you set ablaze a desire within me that brings me nearer to you by the passing minute. I love you.

Evidently, there are more than enough love messages you can write to your girlfriend to prove that you love and adore her. Charm your dear one today by implementing some of the love messages we’ve reviewed here, and watch your relationship scale to new heights.

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Romanticism Essay | Essay on Romanticism for Students and Children in English

February 13, 2024 by Prasanna

Romanticism Essay:  Romanticism was an artistic, intellectual, literary and musical movement that took place in Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century and mid-nineteenth century. This artistic movement was at its peak in most areas in the approximate period of 1800 to 1850.

The prominence can characterise Romanticism it gave to emotional sensitivity and individual subjectivity along with the glorification of all the nature and past preferring the medieval rather than the classical. For Romantics, imagination was the most important creative faculty, rather than reason.

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Long and Short Essays on Romanticism for Students and Kids in English

We are providing students with essay samples on a long essay of 500 words and a short essay of 150 words on the topic Romanticism for reference.

Long Essay on Romanticism 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Romanticism is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Romanticism was an artistic period of attitude or intellectual orientation that was characterised by several works of literature music, painting, architecture, criticism and historiography in the Western Civilisation over a time period from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century.

Romanticism was first defined as the aesthetic in literary criticism around the 1800s, and it gained momentum as an artistic movement in Britain and France. Romanticism was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the political norms and noble social of the Age of Enlightenment and the scientific rationalisation of nature – all elements of modernity. It was embodied most strongly in literature, visual arts and music but had a major impact on chess, natural sciences, social sciences and education. It also had a remarkable and complex effect on politics with the romantic thinkers influencing nationalism, liberalism, conservatism and radicalism.

Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the perception of harmony, order, calm, idealisation, balance and rationality. This typified Classism in general and Neoclassicism in particular in the late 18th century. Romanticism was also an aftermath of the French Revolution that took place in 1789. Even though often predicted as the opposition of Neoclassicism, early stages of Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques Louis David’s studio, including Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson, Baron Antoine Jean Gros and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.

The movement emphasised on intense emotions serving as an authentic source of an aesthetic experience. It gave a new emphasis to emotions such as horror, terror, apprehension and awe – especially those experienced in confronting the unique aesthetic characteristics of sublimity and nature’s beauty. Contrasting to Classicism and Rationalism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism brought back medievalism. It also brought back the elements of art and narrative perceived as truthfully medieval in the attempt at escaping population growth, industrialism and early urban sprawl. Although this artistic movement was rooted in German Sturm and Drang movement, in which emotion and intuition were preferred to the rationalism of Enlightenment, the ideologies and events of the French Revolution also served as proximate factors. It elevated ancient customs and folklore to something noble but also spontaneity as a helpful characteristic.

Romanticism gave a high value to the achievements of ‘heroic’ artists and individualists, whose example it maintained would raise the quality of the society. It also helped in promoting the individual an individual’s imagination as a critical authority gave the freedom of classical notions of forms in art. The period of Romanticism had a few elements which stood out in the Western Civilisation. Romantics had belief in individuals and the common man, and they shared their love for nature. Romanticism showed interest in the past, supernatural, gothic and bizarre things. They had great faith in the inner experience and the power of imagination.

There was a strong recourse to the natural and historical inevitability – a spirit o the age in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Realism was offered, which served as the polar opposite of Romanticism. The decline of Romanticism started during this time which was associated with multiple processes, including political and social changes and spread of nationalism.

Short Essay on Romanticism 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Romanticism is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Romanticism was an intellectual as well as an artistic movement that occurred in Europe between the period of the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Recognised broadly as a break from the Enlightenment’s guiding principles – which confirmed reason as the foundation of all the knowledge – the Romantic Movement emphasised on the importance of individual subjectivity and emotional sensitivity.

The nature of the Romantic Movement may be approached with the primary importance of free expression of the artist’s feelings. To express the feelings of the artists, Romantics believed that the content of the art should come from the imagination of the artist. Not specifically for Romanticism, there was widespread strong belief importance give to nature. This particularly affected the nature of the artist’s work, when the artist was surrounded by it – preferably alone. Contrary to the very social art of the Enlightenment, the Romantics were distrustful of the world, tended to be in close connection with nature.

10 Lines on Romanticism in English

• Romanticism is not an era that can be easily defined by its techniques.
• The principles of the age characterise this movement.
• Over science, reason and industrialisation Romanticism gave importance to spiritualism, emotions and nature.
• This period of artistic movement focused on freedom from authority over a traditional focus on society.
• The period of Neoclassicism corresponds with Romanticism only in the period.
• The ideals of the two movements Romanticism and Neoclassicism, were the direct opposite.
• Romantic music was technically adventurous and highly innovative.
• Along with showing the power of nature, many Romantic artists used their paintings to showcase natural disasters.
• Most famous Romantic art depicting natural disaster was The Raft of Medusa – a masterpiece by Theodore Gericault’s.
• Several paintings of the era dipped into fairy tales folklore and mythology for inspiration.

FAQ’s on Romanticism Essay

Question 1. Which is the largest defining painting of the era?

Answer: Francisco Goya’s painting El Tres de Mayo 1808 (May 3) is considered one of the largest defining paintings of the era.

Question 2.  What did Romanticism focus on?

Answer: Romanticism emphasised nature, emotions, individuality and spiritualism over industrialisation, science and reasoning.

Question 3. When did Romanticism begin?

Answer: The Romantic Movement began approximately in the year 1770.

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