Immense Impact of Romanticism Era on Art and Culture

Romanticism was the largest artistic movement of the late 1700s. Romanticism came around because of political, social, and economic changes. (History) Some important features of romanticism are emphasis on imagination, a capacity for wonder, and the importance of self-expression and feeling. This style of writing was a way for artists and writers to express themselves in a different way. Some examples of authors of this time period are William Blake, Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Shelley. Romantic paintings often featured natural disasters. (History) One of the most important authors of the time was John Keats, who was born in London on the 31st of October in 1795. Keats was a short man, he was just over 5 feet tall. His hair was red brown in color. His father died in an accident when John was just eight and his mother died when he was fourteen. In his time Keats published fifty-four poems and a few magazines. He took on a wide range of poetic types. Some of John Keats poems are “To Autumn,” “Ode on a grecian urn,” and “Ode to a nightingale.”

An event in John Keats lifetime was the insanity of king George the third. He was one of the ruling monarchs, up until Queen Victoria ruled. During the many years that he was a ruler, he got a victory in the Seven Years’ War, led England to a successful battle and advised over the loss of the American Revolution. After suffering bits of mental illness, he spent his last years battling his illness that caused him to go insane. A year after he was sworn in as king, George was married to Charlotte, who was the daughter of a German duke. The next year George selected Lord Bute as his prime minister. King George was not actually insane, he had a blood disease called porphyria. Its symptoms include aches and pains as well as blood when you use the bathroom. A few doctors did a research project on King George and it decided that by analyzing his use of language, they discovered that during his episodes of illness, his sentences were much longer than when he was in a normal state of mind. Another fact about George was that he loved his children possessively and with that hysterical force that he had always shown in relations with those close to him. He was depressed by the prince of Wales’s coming of age in 1783 because it meant freedom from the family. The king’s spitefulness soon switched from insanity to rage.

George III became heir to the throne upon his father’s death in 1751, following his grandfather, George II, in 1760. He was the third monarch and the first one to be born in England and to use English as his first language. George III was the first king to study science as part of his education, and examples of his collection of scientific instruments can now be seen in a Science Museum. King George died on January 29, 1820 from the disease that I mentioned early on. He lived to the age of 81. When he went “insane” he was put under the care of his wife Charlotte. She didn’t come to see him very often because of his crazy behavior and violent outbursts. When she died in 1818 he was unable to understand or know that she died because he was very sick, physically and mentally.

One of king Georges many children was named Octavius, he died when he was a child from smallpox. He lived from 1779 to 1783. The American Revolution began on April 19, 1775, with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The next year, the Declaration of Independence laid out the Americans’ case for liberty, making George III out to be a bad person who had let go of his right to lead the colonies. In reality the situation was more complicated: Parliamentary ministers, not the crown, were responsible for policies, though George still had ways of direct and indirect leadership.

George suffered a second major time of insanity in 1804 and recovered, but in 1810 he fell into his last battle with his sickness. A year later, his son, the future George IV, became prince, giving him rule for the War of 1812 and Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815. George III died blind, deaf and insane on January 29th of 1820. His illnesses may have been caused by his disease, an inherited disorder, though a 2005 analysis of DNA samples suggested poisoning as a possible cause for his untimely death.

Another important event was the Battle of Waterloo. The Battle of Waterloo, took place in Belgium on June 18, 1815. Napoleon Bonaparte took over much of Europe in the early 19th century. He rose through the ranks of the French army during the Revolution, gained control of the French government in 1799 and was crowned ruler. During the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon’s men were taken down by the British and Prussians, marked the finality of his leadership and of France’s kingdom in Europe. After taking political power in, they presented him with the name of first consul and he became France’s leading political figure. In 1804, he crowned himself the emperor of France with a ceremony. Under Napoleon's rule, France participated in a great many battles against many parts of European nations, and the French empire expanded across a lot of western and central Europe. Shortly after, it was decided that the armies, made of a total of about 794,000 troops, should meet along the French frontier and march on Paris by converging routes. The allied campaign against Napoleon began truly in early June, but the armies that had met in Belgium were of huge quality. Blucher’s four corps included many inexperienced people among their 120,000 men. Wellington, whose forces made more than 93,000 before the campaign began, characterized his own army as “shocking.” Of the 31,000 British troops under his command, most had never been under this kind of pressure. Many of the Netherlanders under William, Prince of Orange, were unreliable, because they once served with Napoleon, that was about a year beforehand. The rest of that great army was made up of about 16,000 Hanoverians, 6,800 Brunswickers, and the 6,300 men of George III’s legion.

This particular style of poetry has had a lasting effect on our writing style and the way we live and talk. The Romantics found fresh ways to express themselves: their reverence for nature, in its awesome beauty, was to prove to be a legacy that would last forever. (BBC) Looking upon parts of the environment for inspiration, they pushed people to travel, both literally and metaphorically, into new territories of the world. Their attitudes about life were freeing and made the world seem a bigger place of more opportunity. The outcome of their standpoint has continued to have an effect on culture in many ways. Certain literary character types began in the Romantic period: for example, the rebellious hero and the mysterious lady such as Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’.

Romantics often embraced the scary and the popularity of Gothic novels. There was also very much interest in scientific discoveries and developments. Particularly, Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ has lasted and it has been said that this establishing text made the way for the advances of science-fiction. Literature was not the only art form to be affected by Romanticism though.” Composers also stayed away from the former clarity of balance to experiment, striving for deeper emotional depth.” (BBC) “Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz and Liszt were early pioneers.” (BBC) They were followed by Verdi, Wagner, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, all of who produced inspiring music, and in the twentieth century Schoenberg, Debussy, Bartok, Mahler, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Puccini and Rachmaninoff continued the tradition of writing for the romantic era. Virtuoso conductors and performers attracted a lot of attention. There are several of modern composers who are referred to as Neo-Romantics, these include George Rochberg and David Del Tredici.

These things changed the way we see the world and experience things. We see the world differently and people have changed. The Romanticism period was a very important part of the changing of our world. The authors changes writing and many different things. One thing is for sure, the Romantic era made a shift in the way people thought, and has continued to make an influence on the way we see and experience the world.