From the Keats poems we were made to study at school to the swirling paintings with so much feeling, no student can pass through school without becoming slightly enamoured with Romanticism. The focus on the individual makes us feel comforted and important, bringing us back to our childhood years, in which scientific thought had not yet determined the world, and we still held onto the slight hope that fairies might exist. But Romanticism, contrary to popular belief, is not only an era of literature we revisit with nostalgia, it is a living, breathing entity that rears its intoxicatingly alluring head whenever it senses disillusionment.
Richard Nilsen describes Romanticism as one extreme of a pendulum swinging from historical Classicism to historical Romanticism—not a fixed point in time from the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th, which is the generally accepted definition. It follows a cyclical pattern through which generations get frustrated with the passion and lyrical language obscuring the problems of everyday life and take it upon themselves to employ harsh realism to foster the collective. However, art and specifically literature, nurture the next generation until it gets fed up with the predictability and harshness of reality, and turns back to Romanticism.
Literary Romanticism will always make a comeback, but this may not necessarily be a good thing. With a literary culture so focused on the poetic beauty of every moment, writers and readers fall prey to a nostalgic and romanticised perception of the past, breathing life into a mistrust of science and reactionary thought. This well-loved literary tradition gives us importance, and compares us to past giants, and we, in our human arrogance, accept the compliments and glorify it.
It all comes down to the public wanting escape and looking back to the “good old days”, which there has been no shortage of in recent years. What may be termed a technological revolution has prioritised efficiency over creativity, leading to an outright distrust of tools such as artificial intelligence for the way it so easily sucks the individuality out of everyday work. As a reaction we burrow into the past through literature, finding the horrifically fascinating battles of the Middle Ages in Game of Thrones, or try to escape the boring rationality of the excel sheet by reading A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Essentially, our favourite literary tradition may be making a comeback to comfort us in our time of need. The world feels unsure, and this kind of literature proves a soothing balm, injecting beauty into everyday life, and into feeling alone—but will it desensitise us to the threats around us? The conclusion must be that it is as dangerous as it is beautiful.
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