Romanticism FRQ

Please answer the following in a five paragraph academic free response: To what extent did Romanticism challenge Enlightenment views of human beings and the natural world and how did this challenge illustrate changes between the Enlightenment and Romantic views of the relationship between God and the individual?


The Romantic Era was vastly different from the Enlightenment. People began to treasure their emotions, which they used the arts to express. Ideas of music, visual art, and literature were all revolutionized and started to become closer to our modern ideas in the present. Movements like Sturm und Drang made people focus the music and literature that they created more on themselves. Each person put their own thoughts and emotion into their work. They realized that nature, their own personalities, and even more all came from God. Romanticism was the start of individuality, in which people to payed a lot more attention to the arts, their emotions, and to the natural world which they understood as gifts from God; therefore, the ideas of Romanticism revolted against the ideas and industrialization of the Enlightenment because the people's lives began to shape around God as they became individuals and created their relationships with him. 


Poetry and literature in the Romantic Era showed the voices of the individuals. Lord Byron, a Romantic poet, was the first 'celebrity' type person in history; his poetry brought him fame in England. Keats was more eccentric. He was not a celebrity of his time, but his poetry spoke of nature and of things that he has realized about life and God. Because he had a childhood filled with lots of death, he truly appreciated life and realized the beauty of it. The literature of the Romantic period is different from that of any other period, and it is also different within it itself. Writers spoke their voice, shared what they had learned with the world, and spoke of the beauty of God's creation. 


The Romantic music is easily identified. Listeners can feel the emotions in the piece, which is vastly different from the Classical music. Romantic music has lots of drastic dynamics and changes of tempo, leaving the listener now knowing what will come next. Composers like Beethoven and Brahms were like the founders of modern music with their great innovations. Symphonies that we hear today still follow Beethoven's style. Without him, the transition to Romantic music would not have been possible. The new ideas in the music of the Romantic era showed the styles and thoughts of each individual. These individuals