View the presentation slides embedded in this post and ponder the ideas that formed the period known as the Romantic Period.
- What ideas surrounded this historical time?
- How might these ideas influence the writers who created their works at this time?
Write some questions that arose from your thinking about the ideas as part of the environment, which gave context for texts created during the Romantic Period.
Post your questions as comments to this post.
The Learner's Toolbox 
How did the ideas of Romanticism influence artists at the time?
How did Romanticism begin and why did it spread all across Europe?
Who were some people that supported Romanticism and who were some people against it?
How did the ideals of Romanticism inspire those affected by it?
How did Romanticism affect the musical styles of different composers and musicians?
What caused the transition of the two ages – Age of Reason and The Romantic Period?
Why and how are the ideas between two ages drastically different?
How did the ideas of this period affect the way people think and live?
In what ways did the Romantic Period alter musicians’ ideas and create new music?
What were lives like under the Age of Enlightenment?
How were the new ideas introduced to authors and literature, and in what way did the new ideas influence the authors?
How did Romanticism change or develop European arts and literature and the history of Europe?
How does the assertion of nationalism became one of Romanticism’s key idea and also became the focus of romantic art and political philosophy?
Why and how does nature play an important part in romanticism? How is nature related to the expression of emotion and feelings? What does it mean to be “United with Nature”? How, according to the rules of Romanticism, are we able to enter paradise by “studying nature”?
How does all of these, nationalism, nature, and the rules of romanticism affect how the authors wrote their books during this period of time? how does these ideas serve as a context for the texts during this period?
What inspired poets during the period of Romanticism to write poems?
Why did Romantic ideas capture people’s attention at that time?
Why did they decided to use feelings over reasons?
How can we use nature to understand Romanticism?
Why do humans connect with nature?
How come, as put out by the presentation, people seemed to be very accepting of this romantic social changes?
Why was a ‘revolt against rationalism’ necessary if rationalism was our own creation that worked before?
If Romanticism was reflected through the arts and music, did it also reflect in the governmental system? (We know that things don’t turn out nice when emotions are involved in governmental issues)
Can romanticism and rationalism coexist?
Why did Romanticism spread so quickly?
How do some of the ideas connect through art, literature, and music?
How do ideas from Romanticism affect and shape today’s art?
Why did Romanticism emphasize emotion and feelings while the previous age did not?
Since it’s good to be reasonable not impulsive, why don’t Romantics focus on reason?
What makes them focus on feelings instead?
How can feeling and emotion be weaved into and show from music?
Romantics believe in connection with nature to go into Paradise (a perfect place), why do man always seek and strive for perfection and utopia?
Why is the period called “Romantic” period?
Why didn’t they focus on civilisation too (not just nature only)?
What might happen to humans if the Romantic period never happened?
Why do people portray their emotions and feelings in different ways than each one another?
How did human beings learn to express their feelings without reasoning?
How did people learn to settle back to the nature self?
Is the transition from a rationale-based era to an emotional-based era a one time occurrence (Age of Reason to Romanticism in late 1700s), or is it a recurring pattern in history that have happened before, and will happen again?
It is clearly portrayed in the difference between the Baroque (Bach), Classical (Mozart), Romantic (Beethoven) and the contemporary musical eras on how shifts can be made from one opposites to another, what is the reason for the shift? What allows generations of mankind to shift from one opposite to another like the Age of Reason to Romanticism?
Since Romantics equip the arts as their communication means, and as Romanticism led to nationalism and the European map being “redrawn”, to what extent can the arts promote the identity of a group or an individual?
How does the desire to be civilized and connect with nature exist simultaneously?
Why do artists tend to create based on real life situations?
How did the increased value of nature affect religion?
Why is (was?) imagination viewed as something closely associated with nature?
How did the value of an artist change during the Romantic period and how did it affect their art?
Since the ideas of Romanticism may not be accepted by the general public overnight, how was the public came to term with the change (from the Age of Enlightenment)?
How did human beings learned to cope with the fact that reasoning their feelings/ideas may not be as well accepted during Romanticism?
If mankind once believed that “man was wholly united with nature,” why did the reunion of man and nature occurred during Romanticism? Why not earlier?
How did the idea of romanticism became so influential?
What would the world be like without the age of romanticism?
What major influences were introduced after the period of romanticism?
Would art and music alter during these centuries if the idea of romanticism was never brought up?
Did the idea of rationality exist during the romantic period?
Since the Romanticism period was all about the transition from the age of enlightenment, which contained mostly reason-based explanations, why do humans realize an opposition throughout changes in time and throw away most of those ideas?
The romanticism era was mostly confined to create a relationship between mankind to nature, my mostly concerned inquiry is that why do we consider it useful to engage human with nature and to build a bond between them?
Because of the period’s obsession on nature and how mankind should bond with them, I also am wondering why do we have to base our lives upon the natural world? And why does that idea seem so important towards the ideology of people in the Romanticism era?