Romanticism

            
             Artistic and intellectual movement that originated in the late 18th century and stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from classical correctness in art forms, and rebellion against social conventions.
             The romantic period happened all over the world in the 18th/19th century, in Great Britain it lasted from around 1780 until 1830. The industrial revolution was at its highest even though there were wars going on all over Europe. But the wars of Napoleon stopped this, and the unemployment spread fast all over England, this made the authorities fearing a French revolution. .
             This made people hunger for new and better times, they wanted something to belive in and hold on to through the bad times. They wanted someone to tell them that the nation could rise again, and that everything would be as before (if not better). A new -ism was born: the romanticism.
             The romanticism showed in poetry, drama, painting, sculpture, all forms of concert music and ballet. The artist thought that God was everywhere, in everything: in the nature, in history, art, philosophy, science and in the human beings themselves. The artists were almost supernatural, they got "visions" from God, saw upon life in a different way, and shared it with the rest of the world through poems etc. Often the artists were young, because they would get more inspiration and were more eager to life and love than old people who had already lived through their "golden period" of their lives. They had extreme experiences to know more about life (somewhat like the young people in the 1960's), the writer William Blake writes: "The road of exaggeration leads to the Palace of wisdom", which conferms the fact.
             The romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the norms of the classicism and its strict rules of order, harmony, balance etc. (therefore the romantics were influenced by Shakespeare, who had broken with the rules already hundred years before).