Ideological and art movement in the European and American culture of the end 18 - 1 half of 19 centuries. Arisen as reaction to rationalism of an aesthetics of classicism and philosophy of the Education, ratified in an epoch revolutionary demolition of a feudal society, the romanticism (and as the special kind of outlook and as an art direction) began one of the most complex and internally inconsistent phenomena in a history of culture.
Disappointment in ideals of Education, as a result of Great French revolution, denying of utilitarianism of the modern reality, principles of bourgeois practicalness which victim became human individuality, the pessimistic sight at perspectives of social evolution, mood of "world grief" were combined in romanticism with aspiration to harmony of a world order, spiritual integrity of the person, with gravitation to "infinite", with searches of new, absolute and unconditional ideals.
The dissonance between ideals and an oppressive reality caused in consciousness of many romanticists painful-fatalistic feeling, a bitter sneer at discrepancy of dream and the validity, raised in the literature and art in a principle of "romantic irony". In the best works the romanticism create symbolical and simultaneously vital images connected to a modern history. But also the images of the past gathered from mythology, an ancient and medieval history, were embodied by many romanticists as reflection of real conflicts of the present.
The romanticism became the first art direction in which with all definiteness comprehension of the creative person as the subject of art activity was showed. Romanticism has openly proclaimed a celebration of the individual taste, full freedom of creativity. Giving to the creative act crucial importance, destroying the obstacles constraining freedom of the artist, they equalized high and low, tragic and comical, ordinary and unusual.