The terms ‘Classical’ and ‘Romantic’ refer to periods in Western literature and other art forms.
The Classical period was named thus retroactively by Renaissance-era scholars with reference to the pre-Christian Greeks and Romans of antiquity. Thinkers of the Renaissance, literally meaning ‘rebirth’ in French, considered themselves as the heirs of the Classical heritage, even if that inheritance were interrupted by the Middle Ages (sometimes branded as the Dark Ages). What set the Classical period apart was its stringent, rigid focus on traditional forms and structures, on unity, wholeness, and rational design. In literature, this meant a preference for urban settings in prose and poetic storylines; attention to detail in metre, rhyme, and stanza; and an unrelenting focus on formal execution.
For example, the over 14000 lines of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia are written in a disciplined rhyming pattern known as terza rima.
The Romantic period witnessed an artistic movement that celebrated all strong emotions, including that of love (which most people immediately assume is what the word ‘romantic’ refers to). Writers from the Romantic period searched for beauty and truth in all aspects of life – imagination and emotion, not reason, were considered the beacons of truth and raison’d etre of art.
Romantic thinkers placed more importance on the understanding and expression of strong emotion rather than technical perfection, which was an obsession with Classicists. In some ways, the Romantic period was a reaction, a sort of backlash to the rigidity of the Classical period. We find evidence of this Romantic overthrow of Classical preoccupations in the displacement of urban settings, so preferred by Classical and Neoclassical writers, by rural landscapes and backdrops.
Thus, we find an example in William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, a poem about an eponymous monastery in the rural, southern Welsh country of Monmouthshire. The poem was composed in blank verse - unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter; lines that do not exactly conform to the stress patterns of the metre. Loosely-metred writings such as this would have been anathema to Classical writers, but were passionately embraced by Romanticists.
The Classical period was named thus retroactively by Renaissance-era scholars with reference to the pre-Christian Greeks and Romans of antiquity. Thinkers of the Renaissance, literally meaning ‘rebirth’ in French, considered themselves as the heirs of the Classical heritage, even if that inheritance were interrupted by the Middle Ages (sometimes branded as the Dark Ages). What set the Classical period apart was its stringent, rigid focus on traditional forms and structures, on unity, wholeness, and rational design. In literature, this meant a preference for urban settings in prose and poetic storylines; attention to detail in metre, rhyme, and stanza; and an unrelenting focus on formal execution.
For example, the over 14000 lines of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia are written in a disciplined rhyming pattern known as terza rima.
The Romantic period witnessed an artistic movement that celebrated all strong emotions, including that of love (which most people immediately assume is what the word ‘romantic’ refers to). Writers from the Romantic period searched for beauty and truth in all aspects of life – imagination and emotion, not reason, were considered the beacons of truth and raison’d etre of art.
Romantic thinkers placed more importance on the understanding and expression of strong emotion rather than technical perfection, which was an obsession with Classicists. In some ways, the Romantic period was a reaction, a sort of backlash to the rigidity of the Classical period. We find evidence of this Romantic overthrow of Classical preoccupations in the displacement of urban settings, so preferred by Classical and Neoclassical writers, by rural landscapes and backdrops.
Thus, we find an example in William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, a poem about an eponymous monastery in the rural, southern Welsh country of Monmouthshire. The poem was composed in blank verse - unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter; lines that do not exactly conform to the stress patterns of the metre. Loosely-metred writings such as this would have been anathema to Classical writers, but were passionately embraced by Romanticists.
No comments:
Post a Comment