Romanticism (the first half of the 19th century). The pathos of individualism

This publication continues a series of essays examining the Classical era. This particular essay is dedicated to the manifestations of global artistic culture within the historical period known as Romanticism (the first half of the 19th century – the 1810s to the 1840s). As the defining creative method that gave its name to the era, manifestations of Romanticism were also accompanied by the traditions of Classicism (characteristic of the preceding period – the Age of Enlightenment) and realistic aspirations (which would dominate the subsequent Post-Romanticism). Offering a systematic and cluster-based exploration of the entire body of artifacts belonging to Romanticism from the perspective of their semantic essences, the author reveals its most vivid and important manifestations: the emergence of programmatic elements in musical art, a turn towards the world of the individual, a striving for the intimate, the divine, and the ideal, Byronism and related phenomena, the power of emotions and characters, Romantic enthusiasm, the development of fairy-tale and fantastic imagery, an attraction to all kinds of exoticism, the rise of artists from among the common people, and finally – towards the end of the era – the self-disillusionment, decline, and winding down of Romantic “programs”.