The Romantic literary movement first originated in Britain and Germany. Burns and Blake were the pioneers of British Romanticism. Their creations were in the 1880s and 1790s respectively, and became the forerunners of Romantic poetry. In 1798, Wordsworth and Coleridge published the "Lyric Ballads", whose preface was a declaration of British Romanticism. The Schlegel brothers were important theorists of early Romanticism in Germany. They founded the magazine "Athenaeum" in 1798 and published a series of articles on Romantic poetry as well as the romantic works of Tick, Novalis and others. ism poetry. In 1813, Mrs. Starr published an article "On Germany" in France, introducing and discussing romantic literature. Chateaubriand's "True Christianity" (1802) provides an exemplary work of Romantic prose and fiction. Their joint efforts contributed to the first wave of European romantic literature around 1805. The second wave began with Byron, whose works swept Europe between 1815 and 1825, followed closely by Shelley and Keats. In France there are echoes of Lamartine and Pooh. Bercher in Italy and Hoffmann in Germany were all important romantic writers in this period. The third wave occurred in France, from about 1827 to 1848, when a large number of writers headed by Victor Hugo emerged one after another. In Russia and Eastern Europe, romantic literary thought flourished in the first half of the 19th century, and romantic poets such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Mickiewicz, and Petofi rose rapidly. Romantic literary thought also spread to the United States in the early 19th century, creating a large number of writers such as Whitman, Melville, and Hawthorne, and promoting the development of American literature.
After 1848, the romantic literary movement came to an end, but its ideological trend did not disappear, and its influence is still clearly visible. Hugo continued to publish important works in the 1950s, and some writers called New Romantics emerged from time to time.
Romantic writers emphasized the absolute freedom of creation, opposed the strict rules and precepts of classicism, and demanded a breakthrough in the scope of literature to depict reality. Writers with bourgeois tendencies, with high revolutionary passion and from a democratic standpoint, criticize the evil phenomena of the feudal system or capitalism, and are full of beautiful ideals for the future; writers with aristocratic tendencies start from nostalgia for the old system. They criticize the reality of capitalism from their standpoint, or praise the "Utopia" of the Middle Ages, or indulge in the mysterious world in pessimism and despair, praising night and death. Their weapons for criticizing reality are all humanitarian. They generally sympathize with the suffering of the lower class people and attempt to construct an ideal social picture. Romantic writers loved to describe the Middle Ages and past history. They did not attach importance to reflecting the essence of history, but only regarded history as an artistic scene for them to freely roam. Writers love natural scenery and exotic customs, but hate capitalist reality and urban civilization.
Romantic literature has distinctive artistic characteristics. First, it emphasizes the free expression of personal feelings and has strong subjectivity. Romantic writers believed that the rationality promoted by classicism constrained literature and art, so they gave priority to expressing personal feelings and conducted in-depth exploration of the inner world. In this way, the Romantics discovered the "self," which became the source of a new vision of man and the world. Writers regard love as an important aspect of people's inner world, and love becomes the object they strive to express. They also further developed the exploration of dreams, because dreams not only reflect the content of real life, but also contain a large number of irrational spiritual manifestations. The exploration of the inner world by romantic writers is directly connected with the modernist literature of the 20th world. Second, Romanticism conducted fruitful explorations into various art forms, the most notable of which was the emphasis on folk literature and the creation of poetic novels. Romanticism in Germany and England began with the collection of folk literature. Writers extracted themes from folk literary works, learned expression techniques, and created using folk spoken language and folk song rhythms, which greatly enriched the means of literary expression. Verse novels by Byron, Pushkin and others expanded the scope of poetry to reflect reality, and also promoted the development of full-length novels. In addition, romantic writers conducted in-depth exploration of the functions of language and enriched the expressive power of language. Third, romantic literature commonly uses contrast and exaggeration, attaches great importance to the aesthetic value of ugliness, and strongly advocates imagination. Hugo applied the principle of artistic contrast to the creation of novels, poems and dramas. His understanding of the aesthetic value of ugliness had a significant impact on later literature. Romantic literary works pursue unusual plots, describe bizarre events, create extraordinary and lonely rebellious images, and greatly develop traditional exaggeration techniques. Writers gave full play to their imagination in order to achieve stunning effects, and the romantic color was born from this. Fourth, the melancholy and sentimental mood is loved by romantic writers. Writers are depressed because they are incompatible with the reality around them. Whether they are writers with aristocratic tendencies or writers with bourgeois tendencies, they are all disappointed with reality and show varying degrees of symptoms of the "disease of the century" of melancholy.