A Romantic Industry

Connecting two worlds of individual complexity: a world for the individual and the individual for the world.

"Coalbrookdale by Night" by Philip James de Loutherbourg

The Industrial Revolution was a period of new inventions, new forms of government, and a seeming opposite view from the sentimentality; the Romantic Period embodied.

In Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s novel Sunset Song, he connects the Romantic Period and the Industrial Revolution through his main characters, Chris and Ewan Tavendale. As Ewan is drafted to go to war against the Germans at the beginning of WW1, Chris is left to maintain the farm and take care of the children. When Ewan returns, Chris laments the loss of her old Ewan, as he has been changed by war. Her sorrow relationship embodies Romanticism, as essentially it is a mode by which people lament a period that was different--when woods had not yet been replaced by factories, and communities were more important than the individual.

Just as Chris no longer recognizes her husband in the soldier that has come home to her, many living in the Industrial Age no longer recognized the places they had once known, due to the new innovations of the Second Industrial revolution--horses and buggies being replaced by automobiles, and a new social environment created through the invention of the telegraph and the telephone.

Romantic ideals held the land as sacred--as something holy to be worshipped; used with care and restraint. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, science seemed to be inexorably diminishing, even undermining the preeminence of nature. The problems of humanity could now be solved by machines, inventions, and people would no longer be slaves to seasons and weather.

For Chis and Ewan, the land was everything, but at the end of the novel, a forest above their farm is cleared for the construction of a new factory, destroying the productivity of the farmland below. As land became less important for monetary means and living, people traded traded enslavement to nature for enslavement to a different master: industry.

Adam Smith was apparently influenced by the Romanticism of his time, as he acknowledges the humanity of the workers in English society. “Great labour,” he says, “either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible … If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous and sometimes fatal, … It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work” (page 46, The Wealth of Nations)

In contrast to the Industrial Age ideal that people might be machines, capable of near-constant work and conforming perfectly to an industrial society, Adam Smith stresses the need for human workers to rest, unwind, and experience a moment of freedom from that great machine of societal structure.

Let’s learn the lessons of these two opposing times and work towards an ideal compromise, where productivity and creative freedom--industrialization and romanticism--are two complementary sides of the same coin.

Authors: Mitchell Bayles, Amelia Oross, Jake Smith, Kaylee Tanner

Faraway New Worlds

“Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment.” -Paul Fussell

Background

Whether we are discussing exploration, travel, or tourism, man has always been fascinated with stories of faraway lands. There is something dreamy about locations outside of what one calls home. Europeans have conquered and explored various parts of North America, as well as Asia, and the tales of these journeys have painted these distant places in both better and worse light.

European’s View of Indigenous People

The late 15th and 16th centuries saw an increase in the desire of Europeans to voyage into the unknown. Infamous explorers like Columbus, Magellan, and De Gama started an era of exploration and wonder for places unknown. The discovery of the “new” continents of the Americas as well as new routes in the Indian and Pacific oceans brought with it great tales of how the people lived in these new places. Europeans enjoyed in fantasizing about the strange and interesting lives lived by these new people. During one of Captain Cook’s voyages to the Pacific islands, he brought back a native Tahitian prince named Omai to London. The English marveled at what they called the “noble savage” and the customs by which he was chosen as a ruler. But, even though Omai was esteemed as a wonder, the Europeans viewed him as exotic and backwater compared to themselves. The stories shared among Europeans about the native people in the newly discovered lands instilled ideas of awe and wonder toward the unknown cultures, but this awe and wonder was only to be given at a distance.

European's View of Asia

Romanticism is all about extremes of emotion in the human experience. This led to gothic terrors and fantasies about nature. It also brought us a very romanticized view of Asia. The Norton Anthology of Literature observed that, “Pleasurable terror and pleasurable exoticism are kindred experiences, with unreality and strangeness at the root of both.” This collection of beliefs, termed “orientalism,” allowed people in Europe to skew reality about the peoples of Asia and effectively ‘other’ them. This motivated many to write great poetry and make art which made Asia into both a European love affair and also a new ‘noble savage’ that wouldn’t be viewed as human in the same way as a European.

Conclusion

In both the newly discovered worlds of the Renaissance and the rediscovered Orient of the Romantic period, the European’s exotic view of “other” people placed unfamiliar cultures into fantastic, but inferior social spheres. The Europeans would continue to conquer and colonize without feelings of remorse for these “exotic” cultures for the next few centuries. To those living in the Renaissance and Romantic periods, however, these exotic cultures were pieces of beauty worth observing given to them by the world.

-The Humanists

The Unlikely Brotherhood of the Reformation and Romanticism

"War to the chateaux, peace to the cottages."

This French Revolutionary slogan encapsulates much of the political atmosphere of the Romantic period. The Romantic period was one that glorified and romanticized the extreme, and even the unknown. People began to take great interest in emotional expression and placed high value on the individual. In many ways, this eruption of emotion and revolution was unprecedented in history, but perhaps history is less of a linear procession of events, and more of a tessellation, where everything repeats itself, but sometimes at greater degrees and at different points. Perhaps the revolution and raw desire that filled the Romantic period has its roots in the somewhat milder Reformation movement against the Catholic church.

In both historical periods, there was a distinct sense of finding voice. Protestant reformers like Martin Luther found their voice through the written word. Martin could find no other outlet to express himself fully, something that he felt obligated to do. Luther declared in response to pressures by church and political leaders to recant his words, "I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen." Romanticists also found their voice through the written word although some writings resulted in a much less direct approach. Upon careful consideration, one can see the beautiful lines of the anonymous poem, The Cyclops, are not simply a narrative about craftsmanship, but a calculated jab at the sins of industrialism and factory work.

A nod to Romantic-era stained glass, Bill Jackman, 2014

The Protestant era was in many ways a precursor to the ideals of the Romantic period. The renewed and more intense spirituality of the Protestant era made people more attuned to all of the ways God is manifest in our lives. Martin Luther wrote, "God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on the trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars." He emphasized that God was in everything--the gospel could be found in any aspect, in all of God's creations. Acknowledging nature during the Protestant Reformation spurred the focus of nature in the Romantic era. Taking a deeper, more dramatic, more intricate look at the aesthetic and meaning of nature was a motif in this unique era. Artists and writers of the time took Martin Luther's attention to nature functioning as a means to access God and the gospel, and magnified it. They emphasized it and put even more passion and emotion to that belief.

Another way in which the Romantic era is reflective of Protestant values is the consistent theme of resistance to authority. The great superpower of the Reformation was (emphasis on was) the Catholic church. The degree of its power and reach is perhaps difficult for us to understand in our modernized world. To those in the Reformation period the Catholic church was THE religion and was incredibly integrated across society and nearly the entire Old World. Challenging such authority was unprecedented, at least not without dire consequences. The raw emotion of Martin Luther and his supporters is what made reform possible. In similar fashion, the Romantic period features revolutions which challenged the biggest political superpowers of the time, England and France, all in the name of liberty, freedom, and equality.

The protestant reformation themes carry on throughout history, surfacing in many different ways during the Romantic period. The way romanticists expressed themselves through writing, the love that they had for nature and the political courage they had, can all be traced back to Protestant themes. In a way, the Reformation can be seen as the bubbling of magma to the top of a volcano. Romanticism was the explosion.

William Turner, 1812

Fay Walker, Jacob Lang, Maddie Smith

Tennyson to Twitter: Finding Yourself in Art

During the 18th century, the leaders and thinkers of the day tended to focus their research and ideologies on what was best for society. During the turn of the century, the Romantics swung the opposite direction. After all the talk of utility and the community, these radicals and revolutionaries lifted the individual. They used art in the forms of novels, poems, and paintings as the vehicle to glorify uniqueness and empower the one. In a similar way, the digital age has centered itself on the individual by affording new ways for people to discover and express themselves. Social media, blogs, and constant connectivity are all modern tools used towards this end. “You do you” was the call of the Romantics, and its echo is heard once again today.

editing by Cassidy Crosby, girl's photo by Sharbat Gula, background by Thomas Cole

Art was and is the perfect medium for celebrating the self. Oscar Wilde said, “Art is the most intense form of individualism that the world has known.” This intense individualism can be seen in William Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey.” The poem is written in first person perspective about the narrator’s thoughts. “To me was all in all,” Wordsworth writes. “I cannot paint what then I was.” Instead of telling a story of a group of people, Wordsworth attempts to discover and describe himself. The romantic vision of the beauty of the world in the self was indeed shared by Wordsworth. Although he declares himself unable to “paint what then [he] was”, he exemplifies the romantic tendency to use art to showcase that beauty to the viewer. 

Chiaroscuro: Contrast Between the Gothic and the Fantastic

Chiaroscuro is a technique in art that uses strong contrasts between light and dark to bring more interest to a composition. This balance of light and dark has been a common theme throughout history, but one of the periods that demonstrates this well is the Romantic. During this period there was a sudden blossoming of publishing, and the rise of the novel gave way to two distinct styles: the Gothic and the Fantastical.

These two genres both stem from an abundance of imagination: one exploring our highest hopes, and the other unearthing our darkest fears. Together they clearly show the notions and ideals of the period. The American and French Revolutions were characterized by a spirit of Rebellion and Freedom, and this led to the rhetorical criticism of society and the imagination of new ideas. Many Romantic heroes and horrors came from this new originality; simultaneously producing fantastical stories of Arthurian legend while introducing the world to horrors such as Frankenstein’s monster.

Nature: From Science to Spirit

The instrument depicted is a microscope from the Enlightenment era which symbolizes the science and reason of nature in that time period. The overgrowth and butterfly represent the inspiring and untamed side of nature from the Romantic period.

In his Essay on Man, Alexander Pope wrote about the hierarchical assemblage of the universe and proposed that everything has a purpose for its existence. He pitied the people who thought they found something of the divine in nature, saying, “Lo! The poor indian! Whose untutor’d mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul, proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky way;” Nature was a source of understanding and rational inspiration during the Enlightenment. Far from looking for God in clouds, scientists, philosophers, and artists turned to nature to explain the order of things in the world. John Locke contended that all understanding came from the five senses or from rational thought. Jean-Jacques Rousseau held up man’s primitive natural state as the ideal. Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei and Francis Bacon turned to deep study of nature as the source of answers about the world. They sought to understand nature so they could predict it and control it. From the social contract to calculus, countless world-changing theories and discoveries based on the careful observation of nature emerged during this time.

Look—There's a Colorful Rock Behind You!

The Industrial Revolution was truly a great period of societal advancement. There were new jobs, new wonders of technologies, and new ways to gain fortune that opened doors to many groups, and in turn, the individuals. Although the response to new machines, techniques, and iron making were praised by many, others disapproved of the advancements from industrial life.

In protest to these hazardous machines, toxic pollution, and meaningless deaths, Romanticism arose.

Newton, William Blake, 1795-c.1805

In the picture above, William Blake, a prestigious romantic artist, portrays Isaac Newton as young and muscular, rather than the older figure of popular imagination. Here, he is crouching naked on a rock, covered with algae, at the bottom of the sea and his attention is focused on his diagram which he draws with his compass. Blake, critical of Newton’s scientific approach, shows that Newton merely follows the rules of his compass and is completely blind to the colorful rocks behind him.

Romanticism was in essence a protest of the Enlightenment period. The fact that scientific discoveries were being made about nature, many disapproved and wanted nature to stay as a pure, as a work of God, not scientific discovery. Public protest was developed into an art form during the 20th century, known as the Modernist era; thus, playing into the romantic theme of Individualism and Romanticism as Reaction. Main points of protest and popular discontent include:

1. The Civil Rights Movement
2. The Women's Rights movement
3. The protest against prohibition