Facets of the Romantic Age

Romanticism is many things. It is a concept, a notion, a way of looking at the world and everything in it that strives for ideals and certain values. Many of those values are based on nature and things that are beyond the creation of man. In fact, nature was able to provide a means of shelter for man during the 19th century as the world itself was changing so much in the wake of the industrialization and urbanization.

Romanticism, then, is an idealism that is not necessarily linked to God but which celebrates the organic aspects of God's creations -- such as nature. The human condition of romanticism, therefore, is an attunement to nature and an idealization to it. The human condition of romanticism is found in a number of delightful poets in the British Romantic movement include John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelly, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to name a few.

These poems celebrate nature and its sublime aspects, which are often valued by the poets and the speakers of their poems. This sort of romantic sensibility has endured on beyond the 19th century. Considering nationalism, Napoleon is considered a romantic hero for a bevy of reasons. Again, the basis of this notion lies within the conception of what a hero was during the Age of Romanticism. Chief among the defining points for a hero was his or her subjectivity and ability to expand that subjectivity.

Quite simply, it was heroic to assert oneself against one's surroundings, and to express oneself in a way that many would consider larger than life. Thus, those who were able to make their presence felt on their surroundings -- both in society and in nature -- were considered heroic because they symbolized the expansion of man. Again there was somewhat an opposition of this expansion of humanity and human prowess in conjunction with urbanization and the machinery that typified the Industrial Revolution.

The prowess of man was considered heroic, somewhat in the way that John Henry and his competition with the steam engine/railway train was. Napoleon, however typified this heroism with his martial and political pursuits. That he was able to conquer so much of Europe and parts of other continents was widely considered exemplary of the sort of self-assertion and virtue that a human possessed. The intensity he summoned I doing so was what was revered about him as accordant with the notion of the romantic hero.

There was no limit to his aspirations or his imagination, two traits that are ascribed to romantic heroes. The character Faust in Goethe's drama is considered a romantic hero for many of the same reasons that Napoleon was, save that Faust's ambitions and manifestations of his ambitions were in the field of knowledge, learning, and art -- as opposed to war, government, and conquering. In Fact, Faust was largely considered a hero for a number of different artists and musicians during.