Humanities II course work Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Humanities II course work - Essay ExampleAs the movement grew, it gave rise to expressions of the fantastic and the exotic (Cunningham & Reich, 459). While romance can be a nebulous concept, its most accurately expressed through a core group of elements in art and in literature. One of its earliest manifestations was a love of nature, expressed by artists throughout Europe, who exhibited an unprecedented use of personal perspective, scope and color. This was, in large part, a reaction against the onset of modern society. The growing industrialization of life in the great cities, and the effect of inventions like the railway train on urban architecture touch a back-to-nature movement as Romanticism provided an escape from the grim realities of urbanization and industrialization (Cunningham & Reich, 430). This style struck a chord with people who were, in their take ways, seeking an escape from the de-personalizing effects of society. As the Romantic style gained momentum in the lat e eighteenth and early 19th centuries, it became more self-consciously a rejection of classical art forms. The American and French mutations utilized classical forms to express their rejections of the old forms of government Romanticism to Post-Modernism 3 against which they were rebelling (Cunningham and Reich, 424). The leaders of Americas revolution against Great Britain borrowed heavily from classical forms of architecture to express a timeless connection between their Democratic form of government and that of the ancients Greeks and Romans. For Romantic artists, this was a trammel artistic convention not adapted to the kind of self-expression with which the new style was infused. In the early phase of the Romantic movement, Goethes plays served as a literary catalyst for the turbu bring, aggressive Sturm und Drang school. His works were prototypes of the emotionalism and rejection of governmental authority that characterized Romanticism. Modern criticism still considers Goeth es use of dramatic technique in the Sturm und Drang as unconventional and revolutionary with respect to dramatic forms in general and Aristotelian drama in particular (Stewart, 277). This trend would come to encompass music, poetry and the philosophical system of Emmanuel Kant, Georg Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer. The political environment in Europe at the time was set in turmoil by the French revolution and its aftermath. The Napoleonic wars of the late 18th and early 19 centuries aggravated nationalistic fervor throughout the continent. This historic and political cataclysm had a profound influence on artists and thinkers. Romanticism lent itself readily to mythological themes, and the great life-and-death struggle that engulfed Europe inflamed the mythologies and folk traditions in every European nation. In Germany, for instance, this phenomenon found its apex in the ancient Norse mythology that Richard Wagner would fashion into his famous Ring cycle opera. The lasting impact of Romanticism was that the nationalism of Europes nation Romanticism to Post-Modernism 4 states was enhanced - in some cases created - by the writers and artists of the Romantic movement. Many Romantic artists identified with the nationalist movements of the times and either supported their own countrys fight for freedom (as in the case of Verdi) or championed the cause of others (as did Lord Byron)