Romanticism

Romanticism brings into literature what classicism had kept at a distance: the self, nature, night, ruins, the people. A young man kills himself for love and all Europe wears his blue coat, a Russian poet writes a novel in verse whose hero is bored, a French convict becomes the most read character of the century. The movement was born in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century and spread everywhere, against inherited rules and often alongside revolutions. It also invents the figure of the writer as the voice of a nation.

works 12

• NovelThe Sorrows of Young WertherDie Leiden des jungen WerthersJohann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774An eighteenth-century epistolary novel in which a young man tells a friend, month after month, of a love that has nowhere to go.Literature
• NovelHenry von OfterdingenHeinrich von OfterdingenNovalis · 1802A novel of apprenticeship from early German Romanticism, left unfinished, in which a boy sets out on the roads of the Middle Ages after dreaming of a flower.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryManfredLord Byron · 1817A man alone in the mountains demands from the powers he has summoned something they cannot give.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryOde to a NightingaleJohn Keats · 1819The song of a nightingale, on a spring night, set against human suffering and death.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryPoetical MeditationsMéditations poétiquesAlphonse de Lamartine · 1820Twenty-four poems born of a bereavement in love, in which the poet speaks in his own name of what he feels.LiteraturePublic domain
• EssayMoral FablesOperette moraliGiacomo Leopardi · 1827Philosophical dialogues and tales in prose, between irony and melancholy, on the human condition.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelEugene OneginЕвгений ОнегинAlexander Pushkin · 1833A novel in verse written from 1823 to 1831 and published chapter by chapter, the story of a jaded dandy and a provincial girl.Literature
• TheatreChattertonAlfred de Vigny · 1835A penniless young poet, lodged at the house of a wealthy industrialist, waits for a reply to his job application.LiteraturePublic domain
• NarrativeMemoirs from Beyond the GraveMémoires d'Outre-TombeFrançois-René de Chateaubriand · 1850A man recounts his life and his century, addressing those who will read him when he is no more.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryDoktor Faust: A Dance PoemDer Doktor Faust. Ein TanzpoemHeinrich Heine · 1851A ballet libretto written in Paris for a London theatre, in which the legend of Faust passes entirely through dance and the devil is a woman.LiteraturePublic domain
• Short storiesDaughters of FireLes Filles du feuGérard de Nerval · 1854Stories and sonnets in which three beloved women end up becoming one.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelLes MisérablesVictor Hugo · 1862A former convict builds a new life under another name, and a policeman suspects him.LiteraturePublic domain