Origins of the Romantic Movement
Years of lectures: 1958 - 1960
Abstract:
"The Romantic Movement, which I shall deal with today, is also virtually contemporary with the neo-classical and the picturesque: although we could say that in England the tide of neo-classicism is at full flood about 1770, the picturesque at about 1790, and the romantic not until about 1800. But we must remember that the neo-classical, the picturesque, and the romantic are closely interrelated movements: and we cannot understand the texture of later eighteenth and early nineteenth century art unless we see them as almost contemporary movements representing three different facets of a complicated situation. After the decline of the Rococo, we can no longer speak of a style which covers the whole field of the visual arts. Style becomes a much more self-conscious, and personal affairs, the rights of the individual, and the desire for originality assert themselves in art as in life.
"The Romantic Movement is of the greatest importance in the history of literature and ideas. But I must emphasise at the outset that it is not an artistic style like Gothic or Baroque—we should talk about the romantic temperament rather than the romantic style, an attitude to art and to life, which is not easily defined by may be best understood, as a temperament opposed to the dominance of rules and reason; above all classical rules in the arts."
