My Opinion on Romantic Literary Theory
The Romantic trend of thought that emerged in Europe in the 19th century was a breakthrough against the constraints of classicism in the creative field. It was also a reflection of the late eighteenth century. The inheritance of sentimental literature. The social reason for this was that people at that time were generally dissatisfied with the results of the bourgeois revolution in the eighteenth century. The ideals and promises of the bourgeois enlightenment thinkers were not truly realized in the end; the power of the feudal class was replaced by the bourgeoisie in the revolution, and they were dissatisfied with their loss of dominance; the petty bourgeoisie was defeated in the struggle with the big bourgeoisie. The proletariat participated in the revolution, but the fruits of the revolution were monopolized by the bourgeoisie, and their status and life did not change as a result, so they still opposed the results of the revolution. On such a social basis, romanticism is also divided into two types: positive and negative.
Positive romanticism was initiated by the bourgeois progressive democratic group and progressive elements among the petty bourgeoisie who were dissatisfied with reality. Because they saw that the ideal promises of the Enlightenment had not been realized, and that what had been replaced was not the rule of ideals and justice but the rule of money, selfishness and violence, they fantasized about replacing the cruel reality with "humanitarianism". It formed an alliance with the people's ideological sentiments against capitalist oppression and exploitation, and became the ideological basis of romantic literature. It was associated with the utopian socialism of the time, showing a fantasy of a better future that would change and liberate enslaved people.
Negative romanticism is a manifestation of the dissatisfaction among the feudal aristocrats and petty bourgeoisie opponents after the bourgeois revolution, and reveals a literary reflection of the ideological and emotional longing to restore the Middle Ages. This kind of reactionary romantic literature slandered the role of Enlightenment in the bourgeois revolution, spread fantasy dreams and beautified the medieval reality, and showed a tendency of restoration thought.
The first important feature of romantic literature is its strong subjectivity. Romanticism emphasizes individual independence and extreme freedom. Most of the contradictions in romantic works are that the character's personality is suppressed, personal talents cannot be developed, personal wishes and ambitions cannot be realized, etc., showing the characters in this contradictory state. Feelings, action, and tragedy. Express the opposition and contradiction between people's ideals and reality. In works, the changes in contradictions are often not the transformation of specific contradictions in real life, but the transformation of contradictions in the author's fantasy. For example, some plots in Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Les Misérables" are impossible in reality. The theoretical basis of these characteristics is German classical philosophy. Classical philosophical theories represented by Kant, Hegel and others believe that things in themselves are unknowable and that humans are the makers of natural laws. The unity of knowledge, belief and desire constitutes the highest goal of man. Hegel believed that the truth of the world does not lie in its history. History is constantly changing, and spirit is history. History mixes the rational and the irrational, the inevitable and the accidental, the sensible and the non-sensory. In this context, human thought becomes very important.
The second characteristic of romanticism is the breakthrough of the laws of classicism. Romantics reflect reality according to their own ideals and deal with subjects according to their own ideas, so they must feel that the laws of classicism are a constraint. Hugo believed that classicism was an outdated thing that entertained the ancients, while modern things should express the emotions and hearts of modern people. Therefore, the differences between classicism and romanticism are caused: 1. From the perspective of character creation, the characters in classicism are stereotyped, while the characters in romantic works have unique and distinctive personalities. Sometimes even grotesque. 2. In terms of plot structure, the classical plot structure pays attention to symmetry, reasonableness and clever interweaving, and pursues certain artificial laws. The plot is often bizarre. For example, the Trinity of Classicism. 3. In terms of material selection, Romanticism focused its work on the folk, rural areas, and urban bottoms, depicting farmers, beggars, hawkers, as well as the natural scenery and daily life around people.
Romanticism has the characteristic of prominently expressing the subjective emotions of the creative subject, that is, the main emotion of romanticism. This point was inherited from British sentimental literature at the end of the eighteenth century. It also has a philosophical basis. Berkeley, a representative figure of subjective idealism, believed that the external world is a "synthesis of human feelings" and "to exist is to be perceived." Hume believed that "reality" is the sum of thoughts and knowledge. Therefore, romantic literature focuses on depicting the emotions of the subject, with strong feelings of sadness. The latter is a unique emotion of negative romanticism, a mental state caused by the irreconcilability between romantic writers and the surrounding world, and thus caused the "disease of the century" in the early nineteenth century.
The theoretical origin of Romanticism comes from Germany. The Schlegel brothers used "The Temple of Athena" as a basis to elaborate on romantic ideas. Their main works include "Lectures on the History of Literature", "On Drama and Literature", "On Northern Literature", etc. Afterwards, Heine raised objections to the theoretical work "On Germany" written by the negative romantic theorist Mrs. Staal, and wrote "On the Romantics". Britain is one of the first countries to produce Romantic literature. In the early days there were Burns' "Scottish Dialects" and Blake's "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience". The three poets of the "Lakeside School" who truly pioneered the trend of Romanticism: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey. After that, three more great poets, Byron, Shelley and Keats, pushed romantic literature to its peak.