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Literature vocabulary · Literary Movements

Romanticism

Meaning in literature, with examples

/rəʊˈmæntɪsɪzəm/nounCommon term

In literature, Romanticism means: A movement in literature and art from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century that valued emotion, imagination, nature and the individual over reason and rules.

In Turkish: romantizm, coşumculuk

How it is used

Key names include Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats in England, Goethe in Germany and Victor Hugo in France. Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798) is often seen as its English starting point. In Turkish literature, Tanzimat writers such as Namık Kemal were influenced by it.

Example sentences

  1. Romanticism turned nature into a source of spiritual truth.

  2. The essay compares English Romanticism with its influence on Tanzimat literature.

Common collocations

  • English Romanticism
  • German Romanticism
  • the Romantic poets
  • the Romantic period
  • literary movementA group of writers in a particular period who share similar ideas, styles and aims, such as Romanticism, Realism or Modernism.
  • RealismA nineteenth-century literary movement that aimed to show ordinary life and ordinary people accurately, without idealizing them, often with attention to social detail.
  • poetryLiterary writing arranged in lines that uses rhythm, sound, imagery and often rhyme to express feelings and ideas in a concentrated way.
  • Gothic fictionA type of fiction that combines horror, mystery and romance, usually with gloomy settings such as old castles, secret passages, ghosts and family curses.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Literary Movements

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