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Romanticism in literature can be
described by Keats’s famous line, ‘Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth” The
German poet Friedrich Schlegel had defined Romanticism as "literature
depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form." Victor Hugo had
phrased it as "liberalism in literature". Imagination, emotion, and
freedom are the focal points of romanticism. The characteristics of the
literature of romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on
individualism; spontaneity; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason
and devotion to beauty; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in
society; love of and worship of nature; and fascination with the past.
Romanticism as an aesthetic attitude believes on emotion over reason; sensory
experience before intellect; imagination as a road to transcendental experience
and spiritual truth. Whereas Enlightenment thinkers value logic, reason, and
rationality, Romantics value emotion, passion, and individuality. “Rejecting
the ordered rationality of the Enlightenment as mechanical, impersonal, and
artificial, the Romantics turned to the emotional directness of personal
experience and to the boundlessness of individual imagination and aspiration”.
The Romantic writers, especially the
poets, used to believe all people, regardless of wealth or social class should
be able to appreciate art and literature, and artists should create art or
literature accessible to everyone. The movement emphasized intense emotion as
an authentic source of aesthetic experience. Romanticism assigned a high value
to the achievements of "heroic" individualists and artists, whose
examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted
the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical
notions of form in art. Romanticism, then, can best be described as a large
network of sometimes competing philosophies, agendas, and points of interest.
In a broader sense, Romanticism can be conceived as an adjective which is
applicable to the literature of virtually any time period. So we can say,
anything from the Homeric epics to modern time novels can bear the stamp of
Romanticism. First and foremost, Romanticism is concerned with the individual
more than with society. The individual consciousness and especially the
individual imagination are especially fascinating for the Romantics.
So within the sphere of our limited
capacity, this month we are presenting a special issue of “Our Poetry Archive”
featuring romantic poems of this time. Thirty six poets around the world have
contributed with their literary works in this collection of ‘Romantic Poems’.
And we hope our readers will like this collection more than the previous ones!
As usual we invite poets around the world
to participate in this journey of poetical exploration with their poems! Our
address is <ourpoetryarcive@gmail.com>
Our gratitude to all the contributors of this issue and benefactors, supporters and friends.
A
WORLDWIDE
WRITERS’ WEB
PRESENTATION!
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