Main Ideas of Romanticism - Essay Example

The Romantic human model was the artist, thinker, or creator who took a stand for individual belief and opinion at the risk of social exclusion.

Romanticism influenced music and literature, as well as visual art (Tekiner, 60). For instance, the Sturm und Drang movement of Germany that existed from the late 1760s to the early 1780s was mainly minor-key musical and revenge-influenced literary, which caused a handful of image artists to paint horrifying scenes (Tekiner, 60). For a proper case, there is the Nightmare by Henry Fuseli which was painted in 1781. Some artists were into these movements until their relevant ends, whereas others maintained elements of Romanticism as they shifted to new directions (Tekiner, 60).

The main themes in romanticism included democracy, revolution and republicanism, transcendence and the sublime, the influence of imagination, the source of inspiration and genius, extreme mental states and proto-psychology, and finally the natural and nature (Tekiner, 79). Radical Romantic-age politics were overly optimistic concerning human nature, always reasoning that human beings are vitally good and their vices are raised through poor education. Republican and democratic movements always advocated for mass education and equal wages as a way of freeing the human heart, as well as the mind from ignorance and poverty — and the ills and vices, which materialize from these evils (Tekiner, 79).