Romanticism, Romanticism, in a way, was a reaction against the rigid classicism, rationalism and deism of the 18th century. The Romantic movement, strongest in application between 1800 and 1850, differed from country to country and from one Romantic to another. Because it emphasized change, it was an atmosphere in which events occurred and affected not only the way humans thought and expressed them, but also the way they lived socially and politically (Abrams, MH Pg. 13). “Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary and the transcendental” (Thompson, EP Pg. 108-109). Among the attitudes characteristic of Romanticism are: a deep appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over the intellect; a withdrawal into oneself and an in-depth examination of the human personality, its moods and its mental potentialities; a preoccupation with the genius, the hero and the exceptional figure in general, and a concentration on one's passions and inner struggles; a new vision of the artist as a highly individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures; an obsessive interest in popular culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era; and a penchant for the exotic, the distant, the mysterious, the strange, the monstrous, the sick and even the satanic. (Barzun, Jaques. Pg 157-159) Romanticism was preceded by several related developments beginning in the mid-18th century. which we can call pre-romanticism. Among these trends was a new appreciation of medieval romance, from which the Romantic movement takes its name. (Abrams, MH Pg. 261) The romance was a tale or ballad of chivalrous adventure whose emphasis on individual heroism and the exotic and mysterious contrasted sharply with the elegant formality and artificiality of the widespread classical forms of literature, such as French neoclassical literature. tragedy. This new interest in the relatively simple but emotional literary expressions of the past was to be a dominant note of Romanticism. (Frenz, Horst and Stallknecht, Newton P. p. 70-73) Romanticism in English literature began in the 1790s with the publication of Lyrical Ballads written by Williamworth and...... middle of paper.. ....nse de Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Stendhal, Prosper Mérimée, Alexandre Dumas (Dumas Père) and Théophile Gautier in France. Alessandro Manzoni and Giacomo Leopardi in Italy; Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov in Russia; José de Espronceda and Ángel de Saavedra in Spain; Adam Mickiewicz in Poland; and almost every important writer of pre-Civil War America. (Frenz, Horst and Stallknecht, Newton P.) Romanticism destroyed the obvious simplicity and unity of thought that characterized the 18th century. There no longer existed a single philosophy that expressed all the goals and ideals of Western civilization. Romanticism provided a more complex, but truer, view of the real world.BibliographyAbrams, MH Natural Supernaturalism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1971. Barzun, Jaques. Romantic and modern classic. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1943. Frenz, Horst & Stallknecht, Newton P. Comparative Literature. London: Feffer & Simons, Inc, 1971Thompson, EP The Romantics: England in the Revolutionary Age. New York: The New Press, 1997. Walling, William, Kroeber, Karl. Images of romanticism: verbal and visual. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.