<P> Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the starting point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist . The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that "the artist's feeling is his law". To William Wordsworth, poetry should begin as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," which the poet then "recollect (s) in tranquility," evoking a new but corresponding emotion the poet can then mould into art . To express these feelings, it was considered that the content of the art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules that dictated what a work should consist of . Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were natural laws that the imagination--at least of a good creative artist--would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone . As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creator's own imagination, so that originality was essential . The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own original work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism, and to be derivative was the worst sin . This idea is often called "romantic originality ." </P> <P> Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature . However, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone . In contrast to the usually very social art of the Enlightenment, Romantics were distrustful of the human world, and tended to believe that a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy . Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist . So, in literature, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves". </P> <P> According to Isaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self - assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals ." </P> <P> The group of words with the root "Roman" in the various European languages, such as "romance" and "Romanesque", has a complicated history, but by the middle of the 18th century "romantic" in English and romantique in French were both in common use as adjectives of praise for natural phenomena such as views and sunsets, in a sense close to modern English usage but without the sexual connotation . The application of the term to literature first became common in Germany, where the circle around the Schlegel brothers, critics August and Friedrich, began to speak of romantische Poesie ("romantic poetry") in the 1790s, contrasting it with "classic" but in terms of spirit rather than merely dating . Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his Dialogue on Poetry (1800), "I seek and find the romantic among the older moderns, in Shakespeare, in Cervantes, in Italian poetry, in that age of chivalry, love and fable, from which the phenomenon and the word itself are derived ." </P>

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