Romantics DBQ

Romantic DBQ
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?
Ways they challenged Enlightenment outlooks
- Did not want to live by society’s “rules”
- Many were in love with nature and used it as inspiration for their art
Challenging god and individual
- Shelley was atheist and published papers anonymously
- Keats believed in nature and did not think heaven existed therefore he published poetry to become remembered.

The age of the Romantics was a in a period where the industrial revolution was in full swing, especially in Britain where the industrial revolution had started, cities were flooding with people coming to work in the factories. Enlightenment ideas and new ways of thinking were spreading throughout Europe The British Romantics like William Blake, Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge despised this “new” way of life which did not appreciate the beauty of nature, and forced people to live and work in horrible conditions. These romantics turned to nature in protest of the machine and logical lifestyle that was becoming common after the enlightenment however more unique was the way the Romantics challenged one of the oldest beliefs in history, the existence of God and Heaven itself.

In response to the growing industrial lifestyle of Britain and the implementation of Enlightenment ideas which favored logical order the Romantics turned to the opposite of the ordered world they despised, chaos. They broke previously unbreakable boundaries by exploring their emotions to the fullest. Coleridge used opium to produce some of his greatest works, something never done before, Lord Byron became the World's first ever "celebrity" and had a following much like what celebrities nowadays take for granted, Percy Shelley wrote the pamphlet "The necessity of Atheism" which preached the idea that God did not exist. The Romantics turned order to chaos in whatever endeavor they undertook, the opposite of enlightenment thinking.

The Romantics created a new set of rules by which they lived their life. Unlike the enlightenment style of society and it’s way of thinking the Romantics created the image of the intellectual. They lived by their own rules and disregarded the flow of society. Enlightenment thinking supported science, inventions and machinery like the spinning Jenny and other innovations which were changing the way of life for everyday people. Romantics worshiped emotion and intense feeling. Artists like Shelley and Coleridge explored these emotions intimately. Coleridge himself used Opium as a means to create poetry while Shelly explored love and relationship with multiple women. They did not follow the traditional rules of society and the church at all and their influence transformed modern English society by means of their readers and fans. Lord Byron had a celebrity following for his poetry and the influence of his relationship hopping was great on the general public. The relationship jumping that Shelley was doing, while weird back then, is regular in the western world.

The relationship between God and Man was one of the oldest and most respected beliefs in the world. Most people before the time of the Romantics were born believing in God and died believing in God; the Romantics had other ideas. While Shelley was at Oxford he anonymously published a paper throughout the town called "The necessity of Atheism" which challenged the existence of God and supported logical means of explaining life. The books were declared blasphemy and all were burned. Another Romantic, Keats, did not believe in God and said so; he believed that in order to become immortal himself he needed to leave a mark on the world rather than hope for entrance into heaven. The influence of the Romantics can be seen to this day, many people nowadays doubt the existence of God, and the power of the church to censor and burn is gone. Atheism is not uncommon in the modern world, the Romantics were some of the first Atheists.

The British Romantics challenged the ideas of the enlightenment with nature and religion with logic. They were people who lived out of sink with society and their ideas were contemporary with much of modern day ideas and to an extent their ideas shaped modern day society.