Romanticism is a mood - Dr. Frankenstein standing on an icy landscape contemplating the monster he has created or Francisco Goya waking from a dream with visions of the irrationality that lurks so close to the surface of civilization. Romanticism is a reaction to the rise of capitalism and the French revolution - both of these had been supported by the logical thinkers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment but had spiraled down uncontrollable and frightening paths. Romanticism is the embrace of exotic customs and visual signifiers from the foreign cultures that were increasingly familiar as Imperialism brought the goods of the world to Europe. And romanticism is where we first find the idea of the modern artist - an individual whose genius comprehends esthetic and poetic ideas beyond the understanding of the aristocratic, religious, and academic authorities who had traditionally defined artistic standards. In this class we will examine this movement and its practitioners, both through their artworks and their extensive written records, focusing on the way in which nineteenth-century romanticism provides a model for all subsequent artistic practice.

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