European Romanticism and the Emphasis of the Enlightenment - Essay Example

The romanticism movement was spread to different areas of life. In the 18th century, everything odd, picturesque, and existing in books and not, in reality, was called romantic. In the early 19th century romanticism became the symbol of a new direction, the opposite to classicism and education.

Romanticism is sometimes interpreted as a reaction to the Enlightenment, however, it is believed that romanticism was formed in the context of the experiences that gave rise to the industrial revolution, as well as a piece of the response to the call of Napoleon. Romanticism is a particular world view that has shown itself in a variety of areas: philosophy, politics, economics, and history, literature and painting, poetics, and linguistics. Romanticism claimed universality; its purpose was to synthesize the entire human knowledge, to understand the world in its unity and diversity. The theorists of romanticism in their works turned to music, art, philology, history (McCalman).

The historical fact of romanticism origin is the French Revolution, which clearly demonstrated the complexity and contradictions of the historical process of human greatness, seeking to transform the world and its limited forces. To some extent, romanticism sprang from the bitter historical experience, which created a keen feeling of the contradiction between the beautiful theories and the harsh reality. For romantics, the ideal and the real are tragically separated, but the ideal is above the real (Breckman).

Actually, if romanticism could have avoided returning to myths and fairytales, how would we get to know about these creations? Without this returning, we would learn only about scientific discoveries, but they would not contribute to our mental life. The fact that can’t be disproved is that people have always cared about their spiritual would more than about material things. Really, every discovery is first imagined, and only then is proved with the help of scientific research (Ferber).

Romanticism is closely connected with science, it is even a continuation of it, but it made stress not on the material, but on the spiritual as the essential part of the human soul, without which humans can’t exist. Our life will not be beautiful and pleasant if we focus only on something material, on scientific achievements forgetting about our mental life and desires. This is the reason why romanticism had to return to myths and fairytales because they create wonders for us. The scientific achievements can be disproved, but the wonders will always exist and can’t be confused.