Romanticism and Symbolism: 18th and 19th Century Movements

Romanticism

Romanticism began in the late 18th century and covered the entire first half of the 19th century.

Definition

We can define it as a school, movement, and flow. As a school, it had a manifesto in the preface of the book "Cromwell." It was important as a school in France. It was a literary and artistic movement, but there might be a flow because it razed everything and was in all the arts, philosophy, economics, politics, and even life itself.

Origins

The origins are Nordic; it began at once in Germany and England and immediately was in France, spreading from there to the rest of Europe.

Characteristics

1. Lyricism: This comes from "lyrical," the lyre (a musical instrument that accompanied poetry in antiquity). Lyricism is a very subjective art, individualism, an art that expresses feelings and ideas.
2. Predominance of Fantasy and Imagination: Unlike Neoclassicism (18th-century art), which was a rational, regulatory art, linked to classical antiquity and optimistic, but of ideas, the Romantic gives free rein to the imagination, and nothing slows down their fantasy. Freedom is their only guide.
3. Rebellion and Unsociability
4. Loneliness and Melancholy: One of the major themes of Romanticism is solitude. Another issue is melancholy; there was an "evil of the century" that sometimes led to suicide.
5. Landscaping (Love of Nature): The Romantic loves wild nature (not gardens, that is, nature untouched by man), landscapes in the light of the moon, the twilight, old abandoned cemeteries, ruins. Romanticism in painting is still naturalistic (imitates reality, the so-called art of mimesis). Nature is a consolation, a refuge to which the Romantic escapes and finds inspiration.
6. Return to the Middle Ages: The Romantic goes to other periods in other countries, seeking to evade reality (which is known as exoticism). The Middle Ages makes them dream, with its knights and their ladies.
7. Cult of the Eternal and Infinite (a Legacy of Christianity), also called "Titans": This means they want to go beyond human limits.
8. Idealism: Love, woman, and art are idealized. It transforms reality in the direct pursuit of perfection.
9. Valorization of Folklore and Old Folk Legends: Unlike Neoclassicism, they are attracted by these demonstrations. Some historians speak of nationalism.
10. Openness: There are no rules that mimic inspiration and writing. It tries not to limit the artist.

Symbolism

Definition

Symbolism is an aesthetic movement that expresses feelings, ideas, values, etc., through symbols, creating a hermetic (closed) literature, opposite to that of Romanticism and Parnassianism (a poetry movement). It's a turn-of-the-century poetic movement (which means it is of the late century, and in line with Impressionism in painting), typically French, like Parnassianism, which is a reaction against it, against its coldness, its aestheticism, its formalism, its impersonal theory of art for art's sake, and its themes.