Hey I'm not an extension students so sorry for my rookieness, was told to ask here on the other forum. Can someone please explain to me what romanticism is. I'm struggling a lot on it and would appreciate a detailed, somewhat simplistic because Im really confused, explanation thankyouuuuuu.
Hey hey, so Romanticism is more a way of thinking/literary period than a distinct noun. It started in Britain in the late 1700's and spread from there. Generally speaking, Romanticism is characterised by their reverence of the transformative power of the imagination to shape the corporeal experience, value of emotion above reason, introspective sensibility, a respect for the natural world, appreciation of the ordinary man as opposed to the stereotypical 'hero', a pursuit of universal truth often found through the natural word. In simple terms, they were the hippes of their time.
A lot of their values can be better understood as reactionary to industrialisation and the Enlightenment Era- examples being that the Romantics valued the inherent wisdom and purity of the child (in contrast to the increasing quantity of chimney sweeps in London- Look into some of William Blake's poetry for more background on this), industrialisation degraded the environment and the Romantics revered it, the enlightenment era valued reason and logic as the basis of truth, whereas the Romantics used emotion and empiricism to form theirs.
Hope this helps! schooloflife on youtube does a good video explaining it if you need a little more