what defines Romanticism?

Question

my roomate is writing a report on heroism in American Romanticism. I was trying to help her, but I don't even really know what defines Romanticism. I just know that I hate most of the books that are labled as American Romanticism. they're long boring and over dramatic.

also, is there something essentally differnet between Romantic Heroism and "conventional" heroism?

Answer 1

In a general sense, Romanticism refers to several distinct groups of artists, poets, writers, and musicians as well as political, philosophical and social thinkers and trends of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Europe. But a precise characterization and a specific description of Romanticism have been objects of intellectual history and literary history for all of the twentieth century without any great measure of consensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of this problem in his seminal article "On The Discrimination of Romanticisms" in his Essays in the History of Ideas (1948); some scholars see romanticism as completely continuous with the present, some see it as the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment, and still others date it firmly in the direct aftermath of the French Revolution. Another definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in a way of feeling."

Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key moment in the Counter-Enlightenment, or the reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of deductive reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism.

Answer 2

Romanticism : a romantic high quality, spirit or action. Romantic:a million. (specifically historic) Of a paintings of literature, a author and so on.: being like or having the characteristics of a romance,or poetic tale of a mythic or quasi-historic time; marvelous. [from seventeenth c.] 2. (out of date) Fictitious,imaginary. [seventeenth-twentieth c.] 3. marvelous,unrealistic (of an theory and so on.); fanciful,sentimental,impractical (of a guy or woman). [from seventeenth c.] Mary sighed, understanding her ideals have been far too romantic to paintings in actuality. 4. Having the characteristics of romance (interior the experience of something appealing deeply to the mind's eye); invoking on a powerfully sentimental theory of existence; evocative,atmospheric. [from seventeenth c.] 1851,Herman Melville, Moby-Dick,financial ruin a million yet right this is an artist. He needs to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, maximum captivating little bit of romantic panorama in all the valley of the Saco. 1897,Henry James, What Maisie Knew: by some skill she wasn't a actual sister, yet that in the time of uncomplicated terms made her the greater romantic.