Romanticism and Dark Romanticism

Open Ended

When you think of Romanticism in writing or film (movies), what comes to your mind?

Romanticism and Dark Romanticism

When you think of the word Romanticism, what movies come to mind? Titanic, perhaps? Love & Basketball? The Notebook or The Fault in Our Stars? You wouldn’t be wrong to think that Romanticism has a lot to do with emotion. But you might be surprised to learn that movies like Star Wars: Rogue One, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, Princess Mononoke, and the independent film Captain Fantastic exemplify the qualities of “big R” Romanticism more than the “little r” romance movies that may have first come to mind. It’s true that Titanic has some elements of Romanticism and romance, and the same goes for Moonrise Kingdom.

​Objectives:

• “Big R” Romanticism—as opposed to “little r” romanticism—dealt with big emotions and ideas.

• Beginning in the late eighteenth century in Europe, Romanticism was a philosophical, artistic, and literary movement that developed partly as a reaction to the Enlightenment.

• Romantics prized individualism and rejected rapidly expanding industrialism in favor of a renewed reverence for nature.

What did Romanticists think of the Enlightenment?

• Romantic artists and poets often regarded the formalism—adherence to traditional structures and forms—of the Enlightenment as confining and artificial.

• European Romantic authors included Stendhal, Goethe, Lord Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley.

Open Ended

In what ways are you able to express your individuality in your everyday life?

History

• When Romantic ideals reached America in the early nineteenth century, the nation was caught up in a massive westward expansion and was simultaneously trying to define what it was to be American, both to itself and to the world.

• As American cities and towns grew, people had more time for philosophical and creative endeavors and began to write original works of fiction and poetry, as well as contemplative essays. Spanning from 1820 until the end of the Civil War in 1865, American Romanticism was highly concerned with the individual and this was reflected in the literature of the era.

Poll

Could you give up all of your material possessions and live in nature, off the land, for the rest of your life?

• Yes

• No

Transcendentalism

• Transcendentalism developed in the lates 1820s and 1830s and was influenced by American Romanticism and a religious movement known as Unitarianism.

• Transcendentalism held that there was a part of the self that transcended the physical senses and logic, was highly in tune with nature, and brought individuals a kind of direct, divine knowledge. Transcendentalism was marked by optimism, idealism, and intuition. Transcendentalists criticized materialism, which they viewed as a corrupting influence, and championed social reform.

Poll

Would you consider yourself to more of an optimist or a pessimist?

• Optimist

• Pessimist

Major Concepts of Romanticism

• Optimism and Individualism

  • They were also fiercely optimistic, and, for them, individualism and optimism went hand-in-hand. They believed that every individual possessed a natural inclination toward truth and spiritual enlightenment and that every person had the ability to rise above the material and emotional clutter of life in order to reflect on their lives and take individual action toward a greater good.

Major Concepts of Romanticism

• Kinship with Nature

  • Both American Romantics and Transcendentalists believed that a close connection between humanity and nature brought humans closer to their true selves. This belief was complimented by a concern that the spread of industry not only threatened the natural world, but also isolated people from it. Furthermore, Transcendentalists felt that when individuals were detached from nature they also risked disconnection from the divine.

Major Concepts of Romanticism

• The Power of Darkness

  • The Romantic fascination with emotion and the supernatural led to darker themes, as well. The Gothic and Horror genres took an interest in fear, madness, death, evil, and the destructive aspects of nature. The Dark Romantics, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville, also contemplated sin, the nature of human fallibility, and the intrinsic challenges of social reform.

​Intuition

• ​Romantics placed value on “intuition,” or feeling and instincts, over reason.

• Emotions were important in Romantic art.

• Often times this is associated with the supernatural

Open Ended

Tougher one:

What makes something frighting due to taste?

Style and Form

• Essays

  • Transcendentalism was more than a genre; it was a philosophy. Transcendentalists were critical thinkers who explored many of their ideas through essays, short pieces of writing that attempted to grapple with an idea, explain something, or argue a point.

• Poetry and Free Verse

​There's also a Dark side of Romanticism

• ​A literary sub-genre of Romantic Literature that emerged from the transcendental movement which was popular in nineteenth-century America.

• Dark Romanticism was influenced by Transcendentalism, but did not entirely embrace the ideas of Transcendentalism.

• Emerson and Thoreau were transcendentalists

Open Ended

How would you describe Optimism vs Pessimism? 

Open Ended

What are common themes, trends, or what always tends to happen in scary/horror movies?

​Characteristics of Dark Romanticism

• ​​Dark Romantic works are notably less optimistic than transcendental texts about mankind, nature, and divinity.

• ​Dark Romantics present individuals as prone to sin and self destruction

•  The don’t inherently possess divinity and wisdom

• The natural world is dark, decaying, and mysterious; when it does reveal truth to man, its revelations are evil and hellish (tricks the characters)

• Dark Romanticism frequently show individuals failing in their attempts to make changes for the better

​Themes of Dark Romanticism

• ​Horror, tragedy, (gruesome and violent) and the supernatural

• The success of this movement also relies on the fact that the human psyche is attracted in a subtle way to the fear, pain and tragedy

• How many of you like scary things? (movies, stories, etc.)

• It has lead to the birth of the Gothic style and has greatly influenced music and art.​

Romanticism

• So where’s the romance? American Romanticism and Transcendentalism are not about romance, per se, but they do have something to do with love—the love of truth, the love of beauty, and the love of nature. Like romantic love, Romanticism is characterized by optimism, idealism, and intuition. Romanticism and Transcendentalism, however, direct all of this love and optimism not toward another person, but toward the natural world and the divine within ourselves.

The Pit and the Pendulum

​

Open Ended

Take a moment and think about the things that scare you the most.

Background Information

• Takes place around the time of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478

• King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain had political and religious motives for the inquisition

• Essentially, they wanted to establish Catholicism as the main religion and abolish the Jewish population from Spain.

Sensory Details That Invoke Fear

• Sight

• Sound

• Touch

• Taste

• Smell

Open Ended

What things make something visually frightening?

Background Information

• The Catholic Monarchy spent a lot of time converting Jews and Moors (Muslims from North Africa) to Catholicism (Didn't really have a choice)

• As expected, though, many of the Jews and Moors converted, but still practiced their old religions in secrecy

• (They did this to keep their land and their wealth)

Open Ended

What things make something audibly frightening?

The Inquisition

• It didn’t exactly work as the Inquisition used its power to identify those converts and take their power and influence away from them. 

• The methods of the Inquisition included imprisonment, torture, confiscation of property, and public execution. 

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Open Ended

What things make something frightening to the touch?

1483-1498

• At its height, a Dominican priest, Tomas de Torqeumada, presided over thousands of trials and about two thousand burnings at the stake. 

• First, Auto da Fe (Act of Faith) is a religious ceremony that would take place first

• Second, They would read the sentenced of the accused

• Third, Mass would be held

• Finally, The execution would take place

Open Ended

What things make something frightening due to scent?

Fairness?

• The accused were never allowed to know the identity of their accusers or the witnesses used against them.

• They were not allowed lawyers or counsel for their defense.

• Once captured the any property the “heretic” owned was seized given to the crown or the General Inquisitor.

• Prisoners would often be tortured for confessions. The prisoners were only allowed “breaks” from the torture, because according to the church law once the torture was stopped, it could not be started again.

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Open Ended

Tougher one:

What makes something frighting due to taste?

1808

• The Spanish Inquisition was somewhat halted when Napoleon’s army invaded and defeated Spain in 1808. 

• We will find out from out story, too, that General Lasalle commanded the troops who entered and seized the city of Toledo.

• The Spanish monarchy was eventually brought back and the inquisition wasn’t fully gone until approximately 1834

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