Romantics

Oh to be a romantic. Studying the romantic period in English this year has been one of the most interesting topics I have covered in college this far. Conventionally, the word “Romantic” in our time has a connotation associated with love or passion.  “Romantic” novels fill bookstore shelves covered in pictures of a half naked Fabio seducing some emotionally distressed damsel.  A romantic night usually entails candles, cuddling, and copious lovemaking. These modern definitions of “Romantic” are far from the original meaning of the word.

I began to understand the meaning of Romanticism through another word, rebellion. The age of enlightenment began somewhere around the beginning of the eighteenth century. I studied into this period to better understand the circumstances that gave rise to the romantics. This period essentially focused on the use of reason as a form of intelligence and authority giving rise to common sense (liberty, natural laws, and inherent rights). This was a drastic change from the time of kings and aristocrats who based their authority on their title and the intelligence and knowledge was reserved to a small percent of the people, keeping them in power.  The period of enlightenment dominated the first half of the eighteenth century eventually giving birth the romantics mid eighteenth century.

Romantics were figuratively like new borns in the society they lived in. They valued innocence, youth, asthetic experience, emotion, and sought out the spiritual or unseen truths. The values and mindset of the romantics were drastically different from those of the enlightened period. Many fresh new romantics sported colored wigs (opposed to the white powdered ones of the time) and were proud of their youthfulness. It had been a commonplace in that time for youth to be frowned upon and age was associated with intelligence, position, and power. Romantics changed that paradigm.