1. Romantic: etymology1. romantic, mod. 1. [Referring to love and adventure] --Syn. adventurous, novel, daring,charming, enchanting, idyllic, lyric, poetic, fanciful, chivalrous, courtly, knightly.2. [Referring to languages descending from Latin; often capital ] --Syn. romanic, romance,Mediterranean, Italic, Latinic, Provencal, Catalan, Ladin or Rhaeto-Romanic or Romansh,Ladino or Judezmo, Andalusian, Aragonese, Castilian.3. [Referring to the Romantic Movement; often capital] --Syn. Rousseauistic, Byronic,Wordsworthian, Sturm und Drang (German).

2. 19th century: cultural milieuReaction against the French Revolution: Edmund Burke, Reflection on the Revolution inFrance (1790). Reactions for: Peter Priestly, Letters to Burke (1790); Thomas Peine, Rightsof Man (1791); Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Man(1791), Vindication ofthe Rights of Woman(1791);William Cobbet, Weekly Political Register; W.Godwin, InquiryConcerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness,(1793).

3. Elements of Romantic poetics.The poet; creative power; nature of poetry

4. Defining RomanticismRomantic thought = an initially compensatory reaction to historically new social ills of asociety which was coming to think of man as merely a specialized instrument ofproduction.(R. Williams)Romantic art = a remedy for the ills of thought, a cure drawn from consciousness itself forthe disintegrative effects of self-consciousness. (G. Hartman)Dynamic organicism based on a philosophy of becoming not of being. (Rene Wellek, 1949)

5. Romanticism vs. Classicism.Change in the view of (1) the character and function of poetry and (2) the whole conceptionof the nature of MAN and the world in which he finds himself.

6. Romantic reconciliations.Harter Fogle: Beauty vs. Truth; the unusual in the usual vs. the usual in the unusual.