Romanticism

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

What links Delacroix’s painting Raft of the Medusa with Wordsworth’s poem “Peele Castle,” with Schubert’s art song “Erlkönig?” They have all been described as “Romantic.” What is Romanticism? In 1846, the French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire observed, somewhat enigmatically, that, “Romanticism is precisely neither in the choice of subjects nor in exact truth, but in the manner of feeling...” What scholar Kenneth Clark called the “romantic rebellion” affected the visual arts, poetry, music, and philosophy in Europe and America from roughly 1798 to the 1850s. In this seminar, we will engage with this movement, which rejected the neo-classical artistic standards of “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" in favor of such preoccupations as individuality, subjectivity, emotion, identification with nature, ideas of the ”sublime,” mystery, and a fixation on nostalgia and the past. We will explore and compare examples of Romantic art in these varied media and in different social and political contexts in France, Britain, Germany, and America. There will be a guest speaker, and emphasis on the study of original objects through sessions at Georgetown’s Special Collections and at the National Gallery of Art For more information about this and other courses in the Department of Art and Art History, please visit https://art.georgetown.edu This course is not available to audit.