And Now For Something Completely Different

Here’s a question: What would Alexander Pope have thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau?

I’m raising the question because Rousseau comes as such a departure after the Enlightenment authors we’ve read. Thinkers during the Enlightenment valued reason over emotion, the general over the specific, society over the individual, moderation over extremes, classical models over creativity.

And now suddenly we’re reading Rousseau, who makes statements like

“I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe I am not made like any of those in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different” (Norton 664);

and

“I am a man of very strong passions, and while I am stirred by them, nothing can equal my impetuosity” (669);

and

“I have been reproached with wanting to pose as an original, and different from others. In reality, I have never troubled about acting like other people or differently from them” (670);

and

“During this journey to Vevay, walking along the beautiful shore, I abandoned myself to the sweetest melancholy. My heart eagerly flung itself into a thousand innocent raptures; I was filled with emotion. I sighed and wept like a child. How often have I stopped to weep to my heart’s content, and, sitting on a large stone, amused myself with looking at my tears falling into the water! (674).

By Enlightenment standards, there’s something wrong with Rousseau: he’s abandoned the guiding lights of reason and moderation and virtually parades his extreme, emotional, individualistic behavior in front of the reader.

As a result, he’s the perfect transitional figure between the Enlightenment and Romantic periods.

A handbook of literary terms had this to say about Romanticism:

“A literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in Europe in the 18th century and lasting roughly until the mid19th century. Romanticism is characterized chiefly by a reaction against the Enlightenment and Neoclassicism with their stress on reason, order, balance, harmony, rationality, and intellect.

Romanticism emphasized:
- the individual,
- the subjective,
- the irrational,
- the imaginative,
- the personal,
- the spontaneous,
- the emotional,
- the visionary, and
- the transcendental.

Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were
- a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature;
- a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect;
- a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality;
- a preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure;
- a new view of the artist as a supremely individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures;
- an emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth;
- a consuming interest in folk culture, national and ethnic cultural origins, and the medieval era;
- and a predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic.”

As the definition suggests, one way to understand Romanticism is as a reaction against the Enlightenment. It’s not hard to imagine that after decades of focusing on reason, moderation, and the impersonal, the pendulum might swing the other way, and people would become interested in the emotional, the extreme, and the personal.

The following is a list comparing values and expectations of the Enlightenment with those of the Romantic period:

Reason (Enlightenment) v. Imagination (Romanticism)

Importance of society v. Importance of individual

Nature as order v. Nature as emotional and divine
(the Romantics look at nature as an emotional experience: when they go out into the natural world, they don’t think about the structure and precision of the natural world, they want to have an emotional reaction. “Oh, how beautiful this meadow full of flowers is, and how glorious it makes me feel!!!”)

Head v. Heart

Clock v. Aeolian Harp
(if one of the symbols of Enlightenment thought is the clock—predictable, regulated, mechanistic, then one of the symbols of Romanticism is the Aeolian Harp, a stringed instrument that is placed in a window and played by the wind. The Aeolian Harp produces music at random, without any prior planning or study: it’s moved by the wind just as the individual is moved by unplanned emotions or inspiration.)

Art as “a mirror held up to nature” v. Art as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings

Craft and study v. Inspiration

High poetic diction v. “Language really spoken by men”

High subjects v. Commonplace subjects

Classics v. Originality

One important feeling that pervades Romantic art and literature is the notion that art should break down boundaries and try to do something new. It shouldn’t follow rules, especially rules set up centuries ago. One of the important figures during this era is the titan Prometheus, who defied the commands of Zeus in order to bring fire to humankind. The hero in Romantic art and culture is the Promethean figure, someone who risks the wrath of the gods in order to assert individuality and creativity.

The Romantic era also believes that a person’s reach should exceed his or her grasp. In other words, if you have big ambitions, it’s not important that you aren’t able to complete the projects you started. Percy Shelley writes about “the desire of the moth for the star”; even though the moth has no hope of reaching the star, it’s desire for that heavenly body is something to be admired. It’s better to produce an ambitious, inspired fragment of a poem or symphony than to produce a complete work that’s tame and uninspired.

For discussion:

What sections of Rousseau’s Confessions seem most opposed to Enlightenment thought or taste? Why?