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Romanticism
"designates a literary and philosophical
theory that tends to see the individual at the center of all life, and
it places the individual, therefore, at the center of art, making
literature valuable as an expression of unique feelings and particular
attitudes and valuing its fidelity in portraying experiences, however
fragmentary and incomplete, more than it values adherence to
completeness, unity, or the demands of genre. Although romanticism
tends at times to regard nature as alien, it more often sees in nature a
revelation of Truth, the "living garment of God," and a more
suitable subject for art than those aspects of the world sullied by
artifice. Romanticism seeks to find the Absolute, the
Ideal, transcending the actual, whereas, REALISM finds in values in
the actual and NATURALISM in the scientific laws that undergird the
actual." Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman. "Romanticism." A Handbook to Literature. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NY: Prentice Hall, 1995. 453. |
