Romanticism

If one term can be used to describe the forces that have shaped the modern world, it is Romanticism. Romanticism had a dynamic impact on art, literature, science, religion, economics, politics, and the individual’s understanding of self. There is no single commonly accepted definition of Romanticism, but it has some features upon which there is general agreement. First of all, it was a rejection of the Enlightenment and its emphasis upon human reason. The Enlightenment thinkers asserted that the world of nature is rationally ordered and that human reason, therefore, can analyze, understand, and use it. On the basis of this understanding, a rational society can be constructed. These were ideas that were almost totally opposed by Romantics. Romanticism did not appear suddenly. If a date were to be chosen, however, 1774 would be a useful one. It was the year of the publication of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther, a novel about a young man who is so disappointed in love that he kills himself. This fictional suicide brought on many real ones as the novel’s vogue swept across Europe.