Ludwig van BeethovenMoonlight Sonata

Septet op. 20King StephanSpring Sonata

RomancePathétique

Piano Concerto NO. 4Fidelio op. 72

The

Romantic Movement

1780-1830

Romanticism• Reaction against much Enlightenment

thought• Writers opposed narrow scientific

viewpoint of Philosophes• Not everything is RATIONAL

– Feelings & imaginations are OK– Religion is basic to human nature– Faith is a means to knowledge

Rousseau …We lay too much stress upon words; we teachers babble, and our scholars follow our example. Our real teachers are experience and emotion, and man will never learn what befits a man except under its own conditions.

Emile

Immanuel Kant[O]bjective reality is

known only to the extent that it conforms to the structure of our mind. The main consequence - discussed in his Critique of Pure Reason - is that God, freedom, etc can simply not be investigated by scientific means.

William Blake• Night The sun descending in the

west,The evening star does

shine;The birds are silent in their

nest,And I must seek for mine.The moon like a flower,In heaven's high bower,

With silent delightSits and smiles on the

night.

Coleridge

• "Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming" (from Biographia Literaria, 1817)

In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree :Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile groundWith walls and towers were girdled round :And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;And here were forests ancient as the hills,Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

William Wordsworth

• "Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished." (from 'Letter to Lady Beaumont,' 1807)

Lord Byron "Mad, bad, and

dangerous to know"

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Goethe 

"If you treat an individual as he is, he will stay as he

is, but if you treat him

as he ought to be and could be,

he will become as he ought to be and

could be"

Johann Gottlieb Fichte…The world is truly

the creation of humankind.

…. strong persons conceive of it in a particular way and impose their wills on the world and other people 

KOT p.700

Georg W. F. Hegel

• "I liken my study of logic to the study of grammar. You only really see the rewards when you later come to observe language in use and you grasp what it is that makes the language of poetry so evocative".

Hegel

• Thesis—predominant ideas

• Antithesis—conflicting ideas

• Synthesis—meshing of ideas into new Thesis

• Repeating pattern

Questions?