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Key concepts, The Power of Imagination, The Sublime.
Key concepts - Dispite the great amount of explanations given to the word Romanticism and the different elements that characterise it, the four leading ideas of this period are:
a) the stress on imagination [F 1] [I 1] [I 2] [E2] [S1], personal experience and feelings;
b) the conception of the artist [E2] [S 1] [S2] [S3] [F] as an original creator who is free from any neo-classical rule;
c) the notion of nature as:
a goddess;
a manifestatin of God;
a way of expressing emotions;
a source of feelings.
d) a distinctive literary style which includes a widespread use of imagery, symbolism and myth.
Power of Imagination - Romantic Imagination is not a single phenomenon, but has different meanings in the works of different Romantic writers. There are basically two views of it:
a) First, it is the capacity to see more deeply into the life of things;
b) Secondly, it is a peculiar faculty of the mind to go beyond the power of reason and it leads the reader into a world that is trascendental in its nature. The consequence is that there are two worlds, one available to ordinary people and the other open only to those that have the imagination or genius to see it.
The Sublime - The idea of the sublime first formulated in English by E. Burke had an important influence on Romantic poetry, art and Gothic vogue which characterised the period. Burke had divided beauty into the beautiful (for things which were regular, delicate, harmonious) and the sublime [E2] [F 1] [S](for things which were gigantic, violent, gloomy and aroused terror). The second category included picturesque views-mountainous landscapes, waterfalls, volcanoes and wild countryside.
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