Knowra French Romanticism French Romanticism French Romanticism was a nineteenth-century literary and artistic movement that emphasized emotion, imagination, nature, and individual experience, challenging classical rules and Enlightenment ideals.
Romanticism : An artistic and intellectual movement emphasizing emotion, imagination, nature, and individual experience. French Romanticism was a national expression of this wider European movement.
French Revolution : A political revolution beginning in 1789 that ended the French monarchy and transformed France’s social and political order. Its upheavals and ideals shaped the movement’s conflicts over liberty, authority, and history.
Hernani : A play by Victor Hugo, first performed in 1830, set amid political intrigue in sixteenth-century Spain. Its premiere became a public contest between Romantic innovation and defenders of classical theater.
Alphonse de Lamartine : A French poet and politician whose Meditations poetiques helped establish Romantic lyric poetry in France. His poems made inward feeling, memory, and nature central to French Romantic verse.
Battle of Hernani : The 1830 conflict between supporters and opponents of Victor Hugo’s play Hernani at the Comédie-Française. The controversy made the clash over Romantic drama a public cultural event.
Neoclassicism : An artistic movement reviving the forms and principles of ancient Greek and Roman art. Romantic writers and artists challenged the restraint and formal ideals associated with neoclassical taste.
Napoleonic era : The period of Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and rule in France, from the late 1790s to 1815. War, empire, and political change formed the historical backdrop for early French Romantic writers.
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame : A 1831 novel by Victor Hugo set in medieval Paris and centered on Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Claude Frollo. Its medieval setting and intense characters exemplify Romantic historical imagination and dramatic feeling.
Alfred de Vigny : A French poet, novelist, and dramatist whose works include the poem collection Les Destinées. His austere reflections on suffering and fate offered a distinct strain of French Romanticism.
Romantic drama : A form of drama that mixes tragic and comic elements and loosens classical rules of genre, setting, and action. French Romantic theater challenged the unity and decorum enforced by neoclassical practice.
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