Humanities 2112, Unit 3: Neoclassical and Romantic Civilizations
1700-1789 A.D.> The Age of
Reason (aka The Augustan Age, The Enlightenment, The Neoclassical
Period)
ca. 1730s-1760s > The Rococo
Period
1798-1824 > The Romantic Age
Neoclassicism is
marked by an emphasis on powers
of the mind. This was a period of change for much of Europe; England
became
involved in numerous intrigues internally and on the continent (e.g.,
the union of Scotland
with England, campaigns of Clive in India, conflicts between Whigs and
Tories, the Seven Years' War, beginning revolution in American
colonies,
etc.), and France saw the beginnings of new philosophical notions of
democracy, first expressed by the philosophes.
The Baroque style in art gave way to the Rococo, a more contrived and
much lighter (and, most agree, more frivolous) style pandering to the
aristocracy, with major practitioners including Jean-Antoine Watteau,
François Boucher, Elisabeth-Louis Vigée-Lebrun, and
Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Architecturally, interior designs
dominated during the Rococo period. As the aristocracy began to lose
power, artistic and architectural styles developed into a more serious
and more middle-class Neoclassicism.
Romanticism
was a powerful reaction against
Neoclassicism in liberation of the imagination and rediscovery of
Nature.
English romantic writers, led by Wordsworth and Coleridge, tended to
turn their backs upon cities and centers
of culture for their inspiration, and to seek subjects and settings for
their poems in mountains and valleys, forests and meadows, brooks and
roaring
cataracts. French romanticists’ works took on a political cast to
formulate the concept of “the Rights of Man,” expressing a new spirit
of
political independence. The most influential philosopher
during the
Romantic Age was Jean-Jacques Rousseau.