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Artists And Architects Of The Renaissance

Romanticism was an early 19th century movement that “emphasized values of passionate emotion and artistic freedom”. ( KET: Visual Arts) The Romantics had a deep fascination with historical literature and artistic styles that stood in contrast to a world that was becoming increasingly industrialized and developed. Rather than finding their artistic guidance in the classical principles of harmony, balance, or clarity, the Romantics sought inspiration from intense personal experiences and the historical events surrounding them.
The Romantic era grew alongside the Enlightenment, but concentrated on human diversity and looking at life in a new way. It was a reactionary period of history whose seeds became planted in poetry, music compositions, art work, and literature. A towering leader of English romanticism, William Wordsworth traveled to France after his graduation from Cambridge. Deeply influenced by Rousseau and the French Revolution, he resided in the countryside with his sister and Samuel Taylor Coleridge producing the Lyrical Ballads.
The Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, was a series of poems that examined the beauty of nature and explored the actions of people in natural settings. This form of poetry was free, expressive and without restriction as evident by this passage:
"If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament, What man has made of man?" (Poetry Connection: Excerpt from Lines Written in Early Spring)

Such passages from his work indicate that poetry and literature were used as a form of rebellion or distaste for political institutions or social conditions during the 19th century. However, since most poets thrived on the emotional and irrational abstract that they were writing about, there was no specific category that this mode of thinking could fall into. One could assume that in this specific passage, Wordsworth was rebelling against the industrialization of society and the depreciation of...