Romanticism, as a creative method and style, emphasizes subjectivity and subjectivity, focuses on the ideal world, puts emotion and imagination in the first place, and often uses passionate language, imagination beyond reality and exaggeration to shape the ideal image. Literary and artistic creation, ancient and modern, at home and abroad, has this feature from the beginning. For example, the poems of Qu Yuan and Li Bai in China and The Journey to the West in Wu Cheng'en, Goethe and Schiller in Germany, Hugo and George Shah in France, Byron and Shelley in Britain all have distinct romantic features.
From this, we can see the basic characteristics of romantic literature types: compared with "neoclassicism", it means that romanticism focuses on expressing individuality and sensibility, unlike classical literature, which emphasizes rationality and obedience to society and the whole country; "Enlightenment in the Middle Ages and Renaissance" means that romanticism is legendary and peculiar in the expression of themes and themes. All these characteristics make romantic literature have a completely different look from western traditional literature.
Advocating to ensure individual freedom and independence has become the core idea of romantic literature. Romantic writers often express the feelings, actions and tragedies of characters in this contradictory state from the perspectives of repressed personality, undeveloped personal talents and unfulfilled personal wishes and ambitions. Romantic literature is keen to describe the "century disease" of personal disappointment and melancholy, and to praise the resistance shown in the futile opposition between individuals and society.
Romantic literature emphasizes imagination to express ideals and hopes, nature to express personal subjective feelings and emotions, and symbols and myths to highlight literary metaphor, expressiveness, exaggeration and peculiar artistic expression. These characteristics are the characteristics of romantic literature.
Wellek pointed out that the romantic world view is a kind of natural view, which needs further explanation, that is, what is the significance of the natural world view. The essence of romanticism is against classicism. They believe that classicism's emphasis on rationality is essentially an emphasis on order and law, which violates human nature. Romanticism regards all primitive, unadorned and innocent things as "nature". This leads to a series of opposites between romanticism and classicism, such as romanticism emphasizing sensibility and classicism emphasizing rationality; Romanticism emphasizes the expression of nature, while classicism emphasizes the expression of human creation; Romanticism emphasizes the unity of man and nature, while classicism emphasizes the separation of man and nature. Romanticism emphasizes freedom, individuality and individuality, while classicism emphasizes obedience, individuality and wholeness. Wait a minute. And all this, from the world view, reflects the world's view of nature. Due to the influence of modern natural science, rationalism believes that the world and nature are like a delicate machine and a perfect geometric model, and their operation is dominated by knowable laws. Romanticism regards nature as an unknown world, mysterious, awesome and constantly evolving.
Romantic literature, with a literary spirit beyond reality, insists on the expression of life ideals and even fantasies, trying to show an ideal life scene to mankind with literature. In the words of Schiller, a German writer, romanticism "tries to replace the real lack with beautiful ideals". Romantic literature
Therefore, romanticism does not pay attention to the true description of life objects like realistic literature, emphasizing the authenticity and objectivity of literature, but tries its best to express ideals, subjective wishes and passion for ideals. Therefore, in literary creation, romanticism follows the ideal principle. As long as it can express an ideal and hopeful life, it doesn't matter that the image created by literature violates the inherent logic of life itself. The artistic images created by romantic literature often change the original form of life, and under the strong influence of feelings and ideals, they boldly and artificially create fictional and even deformed images, characters or environments. Romanticism is to imagine and create the artistic world according to the style of ideal life and the writer's subjective emotional logic. It can be said that the artistic world created by romantic literature is not a "mirror world" that simulates reality, but an imaginary, surreal and subjective world. By shaping this ideal world that is impossible in real life, we can express our feelings and express our subjective wishes. Although expressing subjective feelings is the characteristic of various literary types, it should be noted that romanticism also has its own characteristics in expressing emotions. If compared with realism, it can be said that there is such a difference in dealing with the relationship between feelings and life. Romanticism is created by perceptual creatures, and the expression of life is mainly subjective feelings, so the artistic image created by romanticism is often different from the image of life; Realism, on the other hand, is based on things and melts feelings into things. The expression of subjective feelings is restricted by the described life content, and subjective feelings are integrated into the image of life. For example, Bai Juyi also expressed his feelings in Embroidery of cymbals, saying that "Embroidery of cymbals costs a lot, which is incomparable with silks" and that "the singers and dancers in Zhaoyang Temple should cherish their weaving". Expressing sympathy for the Weaver Girl, but the expression of this emotion is based on stating facts and comparison. The scenery description in Li Bai's "Climbing Mount Tianmu in a Dream" is the imagination in passion: "My heart and dream are in Wu and Yue, crossing the mirror lake on a moonlit night", "The sun shines and the cock crows empty". In order to express hope and passion, romantic literature pays special attention to the shaping of ideal heroes, and often strengthens and expresses the tendency of subjective feelings with strong contrast.
Away from reality
Under the control of idealism, romantic literature takes myths, legends and anecdotes far away from real life as its own objects of expression, and creates an imaginary and fictional artistic world by imagination. George, a famous French romantic writer? Sang once said: Romantic art "is not a study of the real world, but a true pursuit of ideals". Therefore, the life described in romantic works often has the characteristics of fantasy. In the fictional special environment, some images with peculiar superhuman character, behavior and ability are described. For example, Du Liniang in Peony Pavilion can come back from the dead for pure and free love; The Monkey King in The Journey to the West has extraordinary ability; Jean Valjean in Hugo's Les Miserables, with his personality and morality, can touch everyone, can do anything, and can make nuns who never lie violate the canon. All these images are obviously impossible in real life, but fully embody the writer's hope and are full of ideal characters or heroes. As the famous Russian literary critic belinsky said, "In the narrowest and most essential sense, romanticism is the inner world of human soul and the secret life of his soul. In people's chests and hearts, it is the secret source of infiltration romanticism. " In order to express ideals and passions, romanticism often uses strong contrasting colors to strengthen and highlight subjective tendencies. For example, Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris shows the writer's clear feelings of love and hate with the contrast between beauty and ugliness and the great contrast between appearance and heart.
Advocating nature
Romantic literature has the characteristics of advocating nature, emphasizing nature as the object and expressing the natural essence of human nature. We have already mentioned the romantic literature.
Moreover, romantic literature pays special attention to nature. This "nature" not only refers to the nature completely different from social life, but also refers to the nature that highlights human nature. Romantic literature pays attention to nature and puts forward the slogan of "returning to nature" because it is disappointed with the inhuman urban civilization and industrial culture brought about by the development of capitalism. Romanticism believes that due to the development of modern industry and the spread of material desires, the original simplicity and nature of human nature, the harmony between man and nature gradually lost. Therefore, the yearning for nature and the praise of natural humanity have become the theme and object of romantic literature, thus opening up a new field for European literature. As the aesthetician Li said, "It was not until the Romantic Movement in the 9th century/KLOC that people explored nature comprehensively and meticulously. Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth and Goethe, that was the first time they brought the sea, rivers and mountains into their works. " On the other hand, romantic literature often shows people's independent ability and spirit of struggle in the natural environment. In order to create an ideal hero.
Bold fantasies, strange ideas, exaggerated techniques
Romantic literature has the characteristics of bold fantasy, strange conception and exaggerated technique in expression. Romanticism does not seek "likeness" in artistic expression, and does not pursue the truth of details like realism. Instead, according to the logic of subjective feelings and the need to express ideals, we give full play to non-recurring artistic means such as imagination, exaggeration, fiction, deformation, metaphor and symbol, and strive to create an ideal artistic world, thus embodying the characteristics of romantic literature in artistic form and expression. Romantic literature often uses exaggerated artistic expression techniques, combines historical legends, fairy tales, natural wonders and exotic customs with legendary story plots and gorgeous language forms to express the ideal world and life, showing a magnificent romantic momentum. The calm description and the truth of details in realistic creation are rare in romantic works. Even in the real scene, romanticism is to express novelty with pen and ink, and try to express subjective feelings and thoughts and feelings.
Pay attention to subjective feelings and ideals
Paying attention to subjective feelings and ideal expression is the fundamental feature of romanticism. Therefore, because of the different nature and orientation of ideals, romanticism can be divided into so-called "positive" and "negative". The so-called positive romanticism refers to literature that shows ideals and feelings in line with the social and historical development trend; This romanticism is characterized by being active and enterprising, and its ideal is full of longing for the future, and criticizes all ugly realities with this ideal. The so-called negative romanticism refers to literature that regards dead or dying life as an ideal. This romanticism looks up to the past because of its dissatisfaction with reality, and the life abandoned by history has become its ideal destination. Therefore, negative romanticism often reveals sentimental emotions, and its artistic interest also reveals gloomy and even morbid atmosphere. However, it should be noted that this does not mean that negative romanticism must be bad or even reactionary. Because the lifestyle and ethics abandoned by historical development are not all undesirable, and historical development sometimes comes at the expense of the loss of good things.
Overall characteristics
Romantic literature is politically opposed to the feudal system, no longer deliberately highlighting human rationality, but deeply exploring the emotional world of human beings, through rose romantic literature
Li's imagination and exaggeration created vivid characters. In the creative style, it is characterized by imaginative conception and ups and downs. Romantic literature came into being at the end of 18 and the beginning of 2009. This era is a period of great release of human spirit and personality in European society. The vigorous Great Revolution, the new situation of free competition, and the disillusionment of the ideal of relic enlightenment have made people in this period at the peak and trough of longing and disappointment, and releasing and expressing themselves has become a trend, and romanticism is the reflection of this literary trend. From the end of 18 to the beginning of 19, romantic literature replaced classicism and became a literary movement and literary trend of thought all over Europe. As a trend of thought, romanticism is far from limited to literature, it is a cultural reflection of bourgeois anti-feudal democratic movement and national consciousness and liberation movement; In the process of denying the old tradition and old system, a wave of pursuing "freedom, equality and fraternity" and pursuing the freedom and liberation of individuality has been set off. At the same time, it also brought about the complete liberation of literary form and content. As a literary trend of thought with special historical background and specific philosophical foundation, western romantic literature emphasizes subjective spirit, individualism and critical consciousness. Romantic writers' creative temperament is mainly manifested in opposing classicism, suppressing individuality, demanding individuality liberation and absolute creative freedom, and denying that artists follow any rules. Their literary ideas and practices are all praise for humanism. Vertically, romantic literature is the inheritance and development of humanism in Renaissance, and it is also a powerful backwash to rigid French classicism. Horizontally, romantic literature and subsequent realistic literature * * * constitute the two systems of modern western literature, which created the prosperity of western literature in the19th century and had a far-reaching impact on later modernism and post-modernism literature. Romanticism originally refers to stories written in Roman style, and later refers to novels or knight stories, and later includes legendary novels. The rise of romanticism in art was first seen in the literary works of18th century, which originated from Hebrew literature in the Middle Ages of Europe. These works fully show all personal feelings, interests and talents. Romantic writers strongly express their hobbies, which are incompatible with the classicism dominated by form and contain more subjective and utopian factors.
Ideological characteristics of romantic literature
(1). Emphasize the absolute freedom of creation, oppose the classical rules and regulations, and demand that literature break through the scope of depicting reality. Hugo pointed out: "Romanticism is only literary liberalism", and its purpose is "only to bring a kind of freedom to the country, that is, freedom of art or freedom of thought". Romanticism had a fierce struggle with classicism in its development. Classicism advocates that only nobles and upper-class people can be described, and folk literature is excluded; Drama creation should follow the "three unifications" and advocate elegant and lofty style, which has become a shackle that binds the development of literature. Romanticism finally broke through this stubborn barrier under the slogan of creative freedom and opened up a new world of literature. Personality liberation is the banner they hold high against the spiritual bondage and oppression of people by society, which is the spirit of the times they advocate. (2) From the standpoint of democracy or infatuation with the old system, attack the evil phenomenon of feudalism or capitalism. Romanticism can be divided into two types of writers: bourgeois tendency and aristocratic tendency. The former has high revolutionary enthusiasm, exposes the dark and unreasonable phenomena of reality and is full of beautiful ideals for the future society. The latter attacked capitalism with nostalgia. The weapon of these two kinds of writers to criticize reality is humanitarianism, and they generally sympathize with the miserable life of the lower class and use it to construct an ideal social picture. Romantic literature
(3) Love to describe the history of the Middle Ages, from Scott to Hugo, Dumas and other romantic novelists, most of them take historical themes as the object of description. Classicism denounced the history and literature of the Middle Ages and regarded them as dark masses. Romantic is just the opposite. While rediscovering the culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, they also described this history as the content. Romantics, on the other hand, do not pay attention to whether they reflect the essence of history. They often capture only a fragment of history. This episode is relatively vague in history, and can be freely galloped by writers, so sometimes the real situation of the protagonist in history is ignored. Dumas' novel is like this. (4) They emphasized the description of natural scenery, hated capitalist civilization and reality, and quoted Rousseau's thought of "returning to nature". These people regard nature as a mysterious force or a symbol of a certain spiritual realm. Wordsworth believes that the treasure of nature is ultimately impossible to find. It is both interesting and instructive. They worry about nature and compare the ugliness of society with the beauty of nature. They not only sing about the natural beauty of their country, but also like to describe exotic scenery, jungles and prairies with rich American customs, living customs of countries and ethnic minorities along the Mediterranean, Gothic architecture, ancient relics and so on.
The Artistic Features of Romantic Literature
(1). It is subjective to emphasize the free expression of personal feelings. Romantic writers think that the rationality advocated by classicism has bound literature and art, so they put the expression of emotion in the first place and dig deep into their inner world. Romanticists thus discovered the "self" and became the source of new horizons for people and the world. Fichte's judgment is the principle they follow: "Take your eyes off everything around you and run to your inner kingdom. This is the first requirement of philosophy for his followers. " Your external things are not important, you are the only problem. "Romanticists believe that love is one of the strongest emotions of people, and everything lives in it through love, so love has become the object of romantic writers' efforts. They regard love as an important aspect of people's inner world. They further developed their exploration of dreams. Dreams not only reflect the content of real life, but also have a lot of irrational spiritual expressions. The excavation of the romantic inner world is directly related to the literature of the 20th century. Romantic literature
(2) Romanticists have made fruitful explorations in various art forms, among which the most striking is the emphasis on folk literature and the creation of poetic novels. In Germany and Britain, romanticism began with collecting folk literature. Romanticism draws themes from folk songs and legends, learns expression techniques, and uses folk spoken language and folk rhyme to create, which greatly enriches literary expression techniques. At that time, under the condition that the literary world was full of blindly antique or vulgar works, it undoubtedly brought a fresh, lively and healthy new wind. Byron's poetic novels are developed on the basis of poetic dramas. Broad vision, integrating the social life of European countries. This new form expands the scope of poetry reflecting reality and promotes the development of novels. In addition, romanticism deeply explored the function of language, enriched the expressive force of language, and opened the way for Barnabas school and symbolism school. (3) Romantic literature is used to comparison and exaggeration, attaches importance to the aesthetic value of ugliness and strongly advocates imagination. Hugo is an advocate and master of comparative art, he put forward: "Ugliness is next to beauty, deformity is close to beauty, ugliness is hidden behind sublimity, beauty and evil coexist, and light and darkness * * *." He applied this principle of contrast to the creation of novels, poems and plays. Romantic writers have understood the important value of ugliness in aesthetics. Clowns play an important role in setting off the protagonist in the novel. Understanding the aesthetic value of ugliness has a great influence on later literature. Romanticists pursue strong artistic effects, unusual plots, unusual events, unusual characters, and unusual and lonely rebellious images, which greatly develop traditional exaggeration techniques. They regard imagination as "the queen of all kinds of talents", and in order to achieve amazing results, they give full play to their imagination, thus giving birth to romance. (4) The melancholy and sentimental mood is favored by romantic writers. Mrs Starr said: "Melancholy poetry is the most in line with philosophy. Melancholy enters people's character and destiny more deeply than other mental States. " Melancholy is a mental state caused by the disharmony between romantic writers and the surrounding reality, which is used by writers with aristocratic tendencies to express their dissatisfaction with the trend of the times, and the "disease of the century" represented by Rene is the most concentrated expression; When the bourgeois writers are deeply disappointed with the reality, they also show melancholy and sentimental feelings, and also show the symptoms of the century disease.