Romanticism (or the Romantic era/Period) was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that
originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate
period from 1800 to 1850. Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, it was also a revolt against
aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the
scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but
had a major impact on historiography, education and the natural sciences.Its effect on politics was
considerable and complex; while for much of the peak Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and
radicalism, in the long term its effect on the growth of nationalism was probably more significant.
The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new
emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that which is
experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic
categories. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, made spontaneity a desirable
characteristic (as in the musical impromptu), and argued for a "natural" epistemology of human activities as
conditioned by nature in the form of language and customary usage. Romanticism reached beyond
the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate a revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative
perceived to be authentically medieval in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban
sprawl, andindustrialism, and it also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar, and distant in modes more
authentic than Rococochinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape.
Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which prized intuition and
emotion over Enlightenment rationalism, the ideologies and events of the French Revolution laid the
background from which both Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment emerged. The confines of the
Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern
realities; indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, "Realism" was offered as a polarized opposite to
Romanticism.Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as heroic individualists and
artists, whose pioneering examples would elevate society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a
critical authority, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse
to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas.
LYRICAL BALLADS,
WITH A FEW OTHER POEMS
BRISTOL:
PRINTED BY BIGGS AND COTTLE,
PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON.
1798.
ADVERTISEMENT.
FOR T.N. LONGMAN,
It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which
can interest the human mind. The evidence of this fact is to be sought, not in the writings of Critics,
but in those of Poets themselves.
The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly
with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of
society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and
inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion,
will perhaps frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and aukwardness: they will
look round for poetry, and will be induced to enquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can
be permitted to assume that title. It is desirable that such readers, for their own sakes, should not
suffer the solitary word Poetry, a word of very disputed meaning, to stand in the way of their
gratification; but that, while they are perusing this book, they should ask themselves if it contains a
natural delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents; and if the answer be
favorable to the author's wishes, that they should consent to be pleased in spite of that most dreadful
enemy to our pleasures, our own pre-established codes of decision.
Readers of superior judgment may disapprove of the style in which many of these pieces are
executed it must be expected that many lines and phrases will not exactly suit their taste. It will
perhaps appear to them, that wishing to avoid the prevalent fault of the day, the author has
sometimes descended too low, and that many of his expressions are too familiar, and not of
sufficient dignity. It is apprehended, that the more conversant the reader is with our elder writers,
and with those in modern times who have been the most successful in painting manners and
passions, the fewer complaints of this kind will he have to make.
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O período romântico na literatura mundial
O período romântico na literatura foi representado por expressivas
rupturas, ou seja, transformações no plano individual, que culminaram na
formação da sociedade da época. Nesse momento surgiram escritores que
se consagraram na literatura mundial como Goethe e Lord Byron.
No começo da Idade Contemporânea, a literatura
iniciou a sua democratização ao mesmo tempo em
que o predomínio artístico e literário que a França
exercia na Europa diminuía. Se julgarmos a
literatura contemporânea por suas características,
podemos distinguir três grandes períodos
literários: o períodoromântico, o período realista e
o período simbolista. Abordaremos no momento o
período mais conhecido na literatura como o Romantismo.
O período romântico vai desde o final das Guerras Napoleônicas até meados do século XIX. A
essência do Romantismo era a exaltação da emoção e do instinto, em oposição ao intelecto. Na
Inglaterra, onde o Romantismo se caracterizou pela exacerbada melancolia, temos como principais
escritores Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Gordon Byron e Walter Scott. Shelley foi um poeta lírico
atormentado e desejoso pela justiça social e amor pessoal. Byron, mais conhecido como Lord
Byron, era a própria personificação do homem romântico. Scott reviveu a Idade Média e, através do
romance histórico, fez ressurgir velhas lendas medievais.
Nesse contexto surgiram os também escritores Thomas Carlyle e Joseph Rudyard Kipling. Carlyle,
conhecido pela sua teoria segundo a qual os heróis são os construtores da história, escreveu Cartas
e discursos de Oliver Cromwell e Vida de Frederico II da Prússia. Kipling, nascido em Bombaim
na Índia, mas educado na Inglaterra, era um romântico defensor do imperialismo inglês na Índia e
escreveu clássicos da literatura infanto-juvenil, que abordaram famosos personagens como Mogli, o
Menino-Lobo.
Na Alemanha, o movimento romântico foi desenvolvido por Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe e
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. Schiller, escritor e filósofo, faleceu jovem, mas deixou
poesias e peças teatrais e escritas que marcaram a literatura e a filosofia alemã. Schiller e Goethe
lideraram a corrente do romantismo alemão, conhecida como Sturm und Drang. Essa corrente
procurava libertar a literatura alemã de influências estrangeiras. Goethe, o famoso autor
deFausto e Os sofrimentos do jovem Werther, foi o maior vulto da literatura alemã. Suas obras
foram um símbolo de perpétua inquietação, que foi e continua sendo um dos traços mais marcantes
do homem moderno.
Na França, onde o romantismo flutuou entre o grotesco e o sublime, de um lado; e a defesa da
liberdade, de outro, temos Vitor Hugo, autor de Os miseráveis e O Corcunda de Notre Dame. Na
Rússia, o escritor Alexander Sergueievitch Pushkin foi considerado por muitos o fundador da
moderna literatura russa; e, em Portugal, Camilo Castelo Branco apareceu com sua primorosa
obra Amor de Perdição. No Brasil, Gonçalves Dias se destacou com sua obra Canção do Exílio.
Na Itália apareceram literatas como Alessandro Manzoni, poeta e romancista, autor do famoso
romance histórico Os Noivos, obra que continha forte característica nacionalista. Já as peças teatrais
de Silvio Pellico, escritor e dramaturgo, continham forte apelo da tragédia clássica, mas, mesmo
assim, as características românticas eram trabalhadas na sua obra.
A literatura nos possibilita visualizar uma época específica e, através disso, compreender aspectos
do cotidiano de um povo, seus anseios, suas necessidades, sua forma de ver e sentir o mundo.
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