1803, "a romantic idea," from romantic + -ism. In literature, 1823 in reference to a movement toward medieval forms (especially in reaction to classical ones) it has an association now more confined to Romanesque. The movement began in German and spread to England and France. Generalized sense of "a tendency toward romantic ideas" is first recorded 1840.
A movement in literature and the fine arts, beginning in the early nineteenth century, that stressed personal emotion, free play of the imagination, and freedom from rules of form. Among the leaders of romanticism in world literature were Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Friedrich von Schiller.
A movement in literature and the fine arts, beginning in the early nineteenth century, that stressed personal emotion, free play of the imagination, and freedom from rules of form. Among the leaders of romanticism in English literature were William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth.
A movement that shaped all the arts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Romanticism generally stressed the essential goodness of human beings (see Jean-Jacques Rousseau), celebrated nature rather than civilization, and valued emotion and imagination over reason. (Compare classicism.)
A movement in literature, music, and painting in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Romanticism has often been called a rebellion against an overemphasis on reason in the arts. It stressed the essential goodness of human beings (see Jean-Jacques Rousseau), celebrated nature rather than civilization, and valued emotion and imagination over reason. Some major figures of romanticism in the fine arts are the composers Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, and Johannes Brahms, and the painter Joseph Turner.