ROMANTICISM

INTRODUCTION TO ROMANTICISM

• Romanticism had its roots firmly in the Enlightenment but as a movement it was much more diffuse.

• French, German and British Romanticism each had their own individual characteristics.

• In Germany, the movement was a reaction to French relativism and was linked to nationalism.

• The overlap between the Enlightenment and Romanticism was most clearly seen in France in the person of Rousseau.

• In Britain the movement drew heavily on the German tradition and the French.

• In the sphere of educational thought, what the movement had in common in all countries was a view of Nature as a mysterious and unknown force which could not be analysed, but which man should engage with his emotions.

• If the Enlightenment believed that man's reason would enable him to control his life, the Romantic would regard this view as an oversimplification of man and society.

• Man was directed more by his feelings and emotion than by reason, though the intellect should be engaged by them.

• While the Enlightenment looked towards a better life for the future, Romanticism looked back to the past in examining man's destiny, with an emphasis on traditions, folklore and nostalgia.

• The contributions of Romanticism to educational theory and practice has been valuable.

• They include an emphasis on the use of play in childhood; the education of the emotions as well as the intellect; a new way of looking at aesthetic education and the arts; and the establishment of the first elements of modern child psychology.

Romanticismcan be said to be concerned with some aspects of the

following:

• The modem in contrast to classicism• A union of love, religion and chivalry• An escape from the Industrial Revolution• A bourgeois revolt against the aristocracy• A desire to soar into the infinity• An emphasis on individuality and self-assertion• the secret and inexpressible delight of the soul

• Isaiah Berlin would include in Romanticism: the joy of every day nature, novelty, revolutionary change, nostalgia, energy, force, and will, a sense of alienation, toleration of eccentricity, and the rejection of knowledge, past, present and future.

• The Romantic movement was responsible for dramatic changes in art, literature, music and architecture both in form an content, resulting in new ways of looking at the world.

• The main difference between writers of the Enlightenment and those of the Romantic period was in their attitude towards Nature. The former saw Nature as a universal mechanism operating according to a set of natural laws. When these were discovered, man would be able to control his own destiny. The Romantics, on the other hand, believed that Nature could not be analysed but was to be accepted as a mysterious, brooding force whose moods were to be interpreted.

DERYA BAYSALİNGİLİZCE ÖĞRETMENLİĞİ

B.Ö. 2-A1090502025