1.HISTORICAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ASPECTS THAT KEEP THE MOVEMENT


We could consider the Romanticism as an epidemic, since it extended over Europe, influencing not only in philosophy and arts, but also in politics and in science.

We don’t know either when and how this romantic disease was started. Already in the 18th century we can see some announcing sparks of that hurricane. At the end of the 18th century several revolutionary events took place in Europe, and that events mark the beginning of the new social order.

The 19th century represents the change from the socio-political model of the Ancient Regime to the bourgeois democracy. The bourgeoisie becomes the ruling class, and the new economic system is established, the capitalism. At the same time the French and American Revolutions hope to divide the three powers and they also hope to get the popular sovereignty.

All those changes were the consequences of the First Industrial Revolution, because it made the people leave the countryside to go to the city to look for a job. It is for that reason that the bourgeois social class was that one that defended these changes and, as we have said, there was a progressive division of  Illustrated models and nobility as holders of the ownership of the economic resources and political power.

Therefore, the Romanticism supposed the end of the classic order, because, since 1770 to 1880, Europe went to bed as an absolutist and neoclassical continent and got up as democratic and romantic. It’s clear that all that is thanks to the English Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) that develops the bourgeoisie and sets the liberalism basis; thanks to the French Revolution (1789) that proclaims the principles of freedom, equality and fraternity; thanks to the American Revolution with its Independence Declaration (1776) that becomes the human rights its centre and establishes the
The city as a figure of sadness, darkness and stress

Republic as the govern form and also becomes people as the exclusive source of power; and finally thanks to all these facts, freedom replaces tyranny, the absolutist power is limited and the democracy is elevated in government ideal.


2.ROMANTICISM: DEFINITION

Romanticism marked a profound change in both literature and though. Romanticism according to Webster’s Dictionary, is defined as ‘a literary movement (as in the early 19th century Europe) marked especially by an emphasis on the imagination and emotions and by the use of autobiographical material’. Although this may be true, there is no single commonly accepted definition of Romanticism, but it has some features upon there is a general agreement.
First, it emphasized upon human reason, feeling, emotion and expression while emphasizing the love of nature, beauty and liberty. Thompson defines Romanticism as a ‘major literary and cultural movement’ that was inspired by the imaginations, inner feelings, and emotions of the romantics.

‘Romantic’ is a term that covers the most distinctive writers who flourished in the last years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th c, ‘Romantic’ is indispensable but also a little misleading: there was no self-styled ‘Romantic movement’ at the time, and the great writers of the period did not call themselves Romantics.

The rise of Romanticism
A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual against the consensus. Its first stirrings may be seen in the work of William Blake (1757-1827).
The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coloridge of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a significant event in English literary history.
This volume, a watershed in literary history, presented a liberating aesthetic: poetry should express, in genuine language, experience as filtered through personal emotion and imagination.
Romanticism can be seen as a revolution in the arts, alongside the political, social and industrial revolutions of the age: all spheres of human activity were

The city as a figure of sadness, darkness and stress

undergoing great change. Wordsworth and Coloridge were among the first British poets to explore the new theories and ideas that were sweeping through Europe
Lyrical Ballads, with its publication in 1798, is classically considered to have marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in literature.

3. FEATURES OF ROMANTICISM

Distant things and exotic things:

The strong imagination of the romantics is in conflict with the reality, because of the poet looks for an escape in the distant things.
The exotic things are present in the interest from the romantics to the Muslim Spain and the Scandinavian mythology.

Resurgence of the popular things:

The "Romancero" and the epic legends are the bases of the inspiration for the poetry and the theater, because the return to a remote age generates the resurgence of the medieval culture.

The love:

The love is idealized so strongly that the woman is considerated as the way to God. The love is judged as a divine principle, but the woman is also cosiderated as a way to the destruction of the man.

"Nature" meant many things to the Romantics. As suggested above, it was often presented as itself a work of art, constructed by a divine imagination, in emblematic language. For example, throughout "Song of Myself," Whitman makes a practice of presenting commonplace items in nature--"ants," "heap'd stones," and "poke-weed"--as containing divine elements, and he refers to the "grass" as a natural "hieroglyphic," "the handkerchief of the Lord." While particular perspectives with regard to nature varied considerably--nature as a healing power, nature as a source of subject and image, nature as a refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization, including artificial language--the prevailing views accorded nature the status of an organically unified whole. It was viewed as "organic," rather than, as in the scientific or rationalist view, as a system of "mechanical" laws, for Romanticism displaced the rationalist view of the universe as a machine (e.g., the deistic image of a clock) with the analogue of an "organic" image, a living tree or mankind itself. At the same time, Romantics gave greater attention both to describing natural phenomena accurately and to capturing "sensuous nuance"--and this is as true of Romantic landscape painting as of Romantic nature poetry. Accuracy of observation, however, was not sought for its own sake. Romantic nature poetry is essentially a poetry of meditation.

Uno de los rasgos principales del romanticismo fue su preocupación por la naturaleza. El placer que proporcionan los lugares intactos y la (presumible) inocencia de los habitantes del mundo rural se observa por primera vez como tema literario en la obra 'Las estaciones' (1726-1730), del poeta escocés James Thomson. Esta obra se cita a menudo como una influencia decisiva en la poesía romántica inglesa y su visión idílica de la naturaleza, una tendencia liderada por el poeta William Wordsworth. El gusto por la vida rural se funde generalmente con la característica melancolía romántica, un sentimiento que responde a la intuición de cambio inminente o la amenaza que se cierne sobre un estilo de vida.

El naturalismo - Existe por lo general una inclinación a invocar a la Naturaleza, a presentar la vida en un ambiente de comunión con una naturaleza no contaminada por el hombre, al gusto de encontrarse en lugares de ambiente rural, donde la serenidad idílica del ambiente es propicia a la exaltación de la característica melancolía romántica. La visión dramática y sentimental de la naturaleza, lleva a que el propio paisaje se represente frecuentemente como un reflejo de los diversos estados de ánimo; sobre todo en la poesía


La Libertad: El reino de la libertad absoluta es el ideal romántico, el principio de toda ética romántica: libertad formal en el arte, entendida como necesidad del individuo para explorarse y explorar el mundo exterior, y para lograr la comunicación del Uno con el Todo, en una marcha progresiva hacia el infinito. El romántico se concibe como un ser libre, el cual se manifiesta como un querer ser y un buscador de la verdad. No puede aceptar leyes a ninguna autoridad. Muchos románticos heredaron la crisis de la conciencia europea que la Ilustración provocó al cuestionar, en nombre de la razón, los dogmas religiosos.

Anhelo de libertad: El romántico se concibe como un ser libre, el cual se manifiesta como un querer ser y un buscador de la verdad. No puede aceptar leyes ni sumisión a ninguna autoridad. Muchos románticos heredaron la crisis de la conciencia europea que la Ilustración provocó al cuestionar, en nombre de la razón, los dogmas religiosos. Esta libertad afecta a tres aspectos:
- Libertad artística: Ser creativos sin necesidades de las reglas reverenciadas por los rígidos neoclásicos.
- Libertad en el espacio: Impulsa al autor romántico a buscar la soledad o huir imaginariamente a países lejanos míticos, cuya vida y paisaje se pinta con devoción.
- Libertad en el tiempo: Conduce hacia el pasado a través del recuerdo o hacia el futuro por medio del ensueño. Esto produce al romántico, una ola melancólica Melancolía porque ya no tiene o melancolía porque aún no se tiene.


5. AND WHAT IS DARK ROMANTICISM?

The term “Dark Romanticism” is sometimes not understood correctly, and is used in different contexts. The difference between “Dark Romanticism” and Gothic is also confused (referring to as anti-transcendentalism, is a label applied to some gothic fiction). And furthermore, the meaning of Dark Romanticism is not exact, neither widespread nor properly defined. On one hand, people vary in their definition, because it depends of their thoughts about this period, and on the other hand Baudelaire, the French dark romanticist wrote that ”To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art—that is, intimacy spirituality, colour, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts”.
But his words, Dark and Romanticism, without the meaning that we are dealing here, only with their own meaning, help us to start to think some ways to know why they are known as the name of this period, I mean, we can understand that something dark and romantic might be sentimental and evil, imaginative and hidden, gloomy and poetic. This words are a matter of contradictions.
Dark Romanticism can be defined as a movement in literature, music, in fact, arts… towards the unfettered expressions of the decadent natural world and the obscure supernatural world.
Authors, musicians, and directors use their imagination to depict decadence and obscurity. It is always winter, and the supernatural and obscure world is far away. Dark romanticists convey many of the strategies of the romantic authors in their writing style. A good example is “The Scarlet letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorn.

5.1 THE ORIGIN OF DARK ROMANTICISM

“The passions which belong to self-perseveration turn, on pain and danger; they are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances;”
 These words, by Edmund Burke, constitutes the theoretical background of the origin of dark Romanticism. This ideas inspired authors and artists.
The birth of this movement can be seen as a reaction to industrialization and transcendentalism.
Dark Romanticism is defined as a historical, literary phenomenon. In the late 18th century, authors reacted against the Age of Enlightenment and it is blind materialism and faith in reason, in contrast to feeling and imagination. Horror and terror tales became popular. Author wrote about the tragic dimension of human life. This genre was born, and nowadays, famous names are Blake, Baudelaire, Poe, and Stoker.

5.2 DARK ROMANTICISM TODAY

For us, the Darkly Romantic era didn´t end in the 19th century. From being a purely literary phenomenon in the 19th century, it has spread to other artistic fields I the 20th century as movies in the 20s (Nosferatu), comics in the 30s (Batman), and music in the 60s (Walker, Cohem).
The problem today is that the darkly Romantic movement is harder to distinguish, and successors are harder to find predecessors. Because, dark Romanticism is a movement in art, not a subculture (this term and Gothic are sometimes supposed to  be a synonymous and they should not). Furthermore, the world is in constant change, and the modern romantic ideals today are different than 200 years ago. And finally, because artists express the need of something more than the reality they know, expressing decadence, and have been apprehended as romantic and even visionary.
(Bibliography: http://hem.passagen.se/hehe/what_is_dark_romanticism.htm)
(Bibliography: http://www.rarevinyl.net/dark_gothic.htm)
6. EXAMPLES

In William Blake, one of the first authors considered as “romantic” we can find an amount of publications dealing with the situation of despair of people living in the cities. Especially in his work named “Songs of Experience”.
The poems appearing in “Songs of Experience” with opposing perspectives of the world.
 Social, political and economical situation of the moment brought the discourege of common people who thought that things were undergoing for the worse way. Even the church is criticized by Blake who believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community which put dogma before mercy.
Some examples found in Songs of Experience are;
    -Holy Thursday
-Earth´s answer
-The Little Girl Lost
    -The Little Girl Found
    -The Chimney-Sweeper :
    The Chimney Sweeper makes that irony explicit. This poem clearly denounces the Church, as evidenced in his depiction of the child sweeper dying in the snow while his parents are in church. The poem depicts the reality of the child's fate, despite the angel's promise and the child's sense of duty. In fact, the poem could not be more explicit on the manner in which parents, king, and Church collude to build a hell on earth.
In The Chimney Sweeper of Songs of Innocence, while conveying the misery of the young victims of society, Blake emphasizes the contentment and sense of security of the soot-covered boys. Most chimney sweepers from this time were abandoned children of prostitutes or orphans.
-The Sick Rose
-The Angel
-The Tyger

"The Tyger" reflects a knowledge that evil exists in the world and that benevolence is not omnipresent. This poem is a metaphor about industrialization; the tiger is very beautiful, but it is also very dangerous, a creature capable of great destruction.
-My Pretty Rose Tree
-The Garden of Love
-The Little Vagabond
-London
The poem reflects Blake's extreme disillusionment with the suffering he saw in London.
-The Human Abstract
-Infant Sorrow
-A Poison Tree
-A little Boy Lost
-The Schoolboy
-To Terzah
-The Voice of the Ancient Bard
On the other hand, the group of major romantic poets of England were englobed under the name of the THE BIG FIVE: (sometimes blake is also included on this group)
Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy B. Shelley, William Wordsworth and John Keats.
The poetry developed by these authors is more based in feelings than in reason, their works are more original, more creative than the previous tendencies. It appear an strong appreciation for the individualism (the author himself is the most important) and a big sense of nationalism.