AP European History

## Learning Outcomes

- Understand how **Romanticism** reacted against Enlightenment rationalism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
- Explain how Romantic writers responded to the **French Revolution** with both hope and disillusionment
- Identify how Romantic literature criticized **industrialization**, urban misery, and mechanized life
- Recall key writers and works connected to revolution, nature, liberty, and social criticism
- Distinguish Romantic literary responses from later **Realist** critiques of society
- Use specific evidence in SAQ, DBQ, and LEQ answers on 19th-century culture

## AP European History Syllabus

For the AP European History, you are expected to understand how Romantic writers responded to political and social upheaval in the 19th century, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that **Romanticism** emerged in the late 18th century as a reaction against Enlightenment reason and neoclassical order
- Identify how writers responded differently to the **French Revolution of 1789**, the **Reign of Terror (1793–1794)**, and Napoleon
- Understand how Romantic writers criticized **industrialization**, urban suffering, child labor, and materialism
- Explain the importance of **nature**, **emotion**, **individualism**, and the **sublime** in Romantic literature
- Know specific writers and examples such as **Wordsworth**, **Coleridge**, **Blake**, **Shelley**, **Byron**, **Goethe**, and **Mary Shelley**
- Distinguish Romantic criticism of modern society from later **Realist** writing such as Dickens
- Understand the link between Romanticism and **nationalism**, including support for folk culture and struggles for independence

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. Why did Romanticism develop as a reaction against Enlightenment thought?
2. How did the French Revolution inspire some Romantic writers and disappoint others?
3. In what ways did writers such as Blake and Wordsworth criticize industrial society?
4. Why is _Frankenstein_ better understood as a warning about unchecked progress than as simple anti-science writing?
5. How did Romantic literature connect with nationalism in 19th-century Europe?

## Introduction

In AP European History Unit 7, Romanticism matters because it shows how culture responded to the massive disruptions of the age: revolution, war, industrialization, urban growth, and the weakening of older religious certainty. Romantic writers did not just produce emotional poetry. They offered arguments about what modern life was doing to human beings.

Romantic literature can be read as a defense of feeling, imagination, liberty, and the inner life against systems that seemed cold, violent, or mechanical. Sometimes the enemy was political tyranny. Sometimes it was industrial capitalism. Sometimes it was the belief that reason alone could solve everything.

> **Key Term: Romanticism**
> A late 18th- to mid-19th-century cultural movement that emphasized emotion, imagination, nature, subjectivity, and individual experience over pure reason and formal restraint.

### Romanticism as a response to Enlightenment reason and revolution

Romanticism grew partly out of dissatisfaction with the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers had stressed reason, order, universal laws, and rational reform. Romantics did not always reject reason completely, but they rejected the idea that reason alone was enough. Human beings also felt grief, awe, terror, joy, loneliness, longing, and spiritual doubt. Romantic writers thought these experiences mattered.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau helped prepare the ground for this shift. He was not a full Romantic writer of the 19th century, but he influenced the movement strongly. In _Émile_, he argued that education should follow nature rather than rote learning. That idea mattered because it challenged the controlled, rule-bound intellectual culture of the 18th century.

> **Key Term: individualism**
> The emphasis on the unique self, personal feeling, and individual experience as central sources of truth and meaning.

The **French Revolution** pushed these tendencies further. At first, many writers saw 1789 as the beginning of a better world. The destruction of absolutism seemed to promise liberty, equality, and renewal. To young writers, the Revolution looked like history breaking open.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are crucial here. Both were initially sympathetic to revolutionary ideals. That early support is important exam evidence because it shows that Romanticism was not simply conservative nostalgia. In its early phase, it often aligned with political hope.

But events after 1789 changed the tone. The **Reign of Terror** and then Napoleon’s rule made many writers doubt whether liberation had turned into a new form of oppression. This is one of the most important cause-and-effect chains in the topic:

- Enlightenment criticism of old regimes helped inspire revolution
- revolution raised hopes of liberty
- revolutionary violence produced disillusionment
- Romantic writers turned inward, toward memory, conscience, feeling, and nature

Wordsworth is a strong example of this shift. He moved from enthusiasm for revolutionary change to a more reflective and cautious outlook. His later emphasis on nature was not an escape from politics in a trivial sense. It was a search for moral stability after political upheaval had become frightening.

Coleridge followed a similar path. His writing shows admiration for liberty but distrust when revolution became coercive or imperial. This distinction is useful in essays: writers could support freedom without supporting revolutionary violence.

> **Test Tip:** In an SAQ or LEQ, do not write that “Romantics opposed the French Revolution.” A stronger answer says many Romantics first supported its ideals, then became disillusioned by the Terror and Napoleon.

Not all Romantic writers responded by retreating from politics. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron remained much more openly rebellious. Shelley attacked oppression and tyranny directly. Byron linked Romantic literature to active political struggle by supporting Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. That matters for AP themes of **national and European identity** and **states and other institutions of power**.

Goethe also belongs in this discussion, though his role is somewhat different. His _Sorrows of Young Werther_ and _Faust_ helped define important Romantic traits: intense emotion, inner conflict, rebellion against limits, and interest in the supernatural. He shows that Romanticism was European, not only British.

### Nature, the sublime, and criticism of industrial society

Romantic writers did not just react to revolution. They also reacted to the huge social changes created by industrialization. Students often blur Unit 6 and Unit 7 here. The safer approach is this: industrialization is the historical context, while Romantic writing is the cultural response.

Factories, smoke, mechanization, child labor, and fast-growing cities made many writers think that modern society was becoming dehumanizing. Romantic literature often answered this by praising nature, rural life, memory, and spiritual feeling.

> **Key Term: sublime**
> A Romantic idea describing overwhelming awe, wonder, and sometimes terror, especially when a person confronts the vast power of nature.

Wordsworth is central. In works such as _Tintern Abbey_ and _The world is too much with us_, nature is not just scenery. It is a moral and emotional corrective. Nature restores perception and feeling in a society distracted by money and material concerns. This is why his poetry matters historically: it suggests that industrial modernity damages inner life.

William Blake offers a sharper social critique. He is one of the best AP examples for Romantic attacks on industrialization. In poems such as _London_ and _The Chimney Sweeper_, he presents urban life as oppressive, unequal, and morally corrupt. He attacks institutions that allow suffering, especially the suffering of children.

Blake’s famous phrase about “dark Satanic mills” became a powerful symbol of industrial society. Even when students do not quote the phrase, they should understand what it stands for:

- factories as ugly and spiritually deadening
- labor as mechanical and exploitative
- the city as a place of confinement rather than freedom
- industrial wealth built on human misery
  > **Key Term: industrialization**
  > The shift to machine-based production, factory labor, and urban growth that reshaped European society from the late 18th century onward.

Blake is especially useful because he shows that Romantic criticism of industry was not vague dislike of change. It was a moral protest against specific forms of suffering: poverty, child labor, urban crowding, and institutional hypocrisy.

This is also where many students can make a smart distinction. Romantic writers often criticized industrial society through symbolism, emotion, and contrast with nature. Later **Realists** such as Charles Dickens described industrial misery in more detailed social observation. Both criticized modern society, but they did so differently.

> **Test Tip:** If a prompt asks specifically about Romantic writers, do not lead with Dickens. He is better used as a contrast showing how later Realists criticized industry differently from Romantics such as Blake and Wordsworth.

Romantic interest in folklore and peasant life also fits this anti-industrial mood. Country people were often idealized as living closer to nature and farther from corruption. This was not always realistic, but it shows what Romantics valued: authenticity over commercial modernity.

### Rebellion, science, and national feeling in Romantic literature

Some Romantic writers confronted modernity through political rebellion. Shelley’s _The Mask of Anarchy_ was a protest against the **Peterloo Massacre**. That makes it a very useful bridge between literature and political history. Shelley presented poetry as moral resistance to oppression, not merely private feeling.

Byron developed the image of the rebellious outsider, later called the **Byronic hero**. Proud, restless, moody, defiant, and alienated, this figure reflected broader Romantic distrust of convention. Byron’s support for Greek independence also shows how Romanticism could merge with nationalism.

> **Key Term: nationalism**
> Loyalty to a people defined by shared culture, language, history, or identity, often linked to demands for self-government or independence.

Romantic nationalism did not always mean support for every revolution. It often meant celebrating a people’s folk traditions, language, myths, and historical memory. This is why interest in medieval history, folklore, and peasant culture mattered. Writers and artists helped invent national pasts that modern nations could claim.

That is also why figures such as Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo matter. Their fascination with the Middle Ages was not simple escapism. It helped shape modern ideas of national history and cultural identity.

Mary Shelley’s _Frankenstein_ is especially valuable because it connects several strands of Romanticism at once. It is often misread as anti-science. A better historical reading is that it criticizes **unchecked** scientific ambition and progress detached from morality, sympathy, and responsibility.

Victor Frankenstein tries to master nature through intellect and will. He succeeds technically, but fails morally. The result is alienation, suffering, and destruction. This fits Romantic anxieties about a world increasingly shaped by control, calculation, and power without emotional or ethical restraint.

The natural settings in _Frankenstein_ also matter. Mountains, glaciers, and storms reflect the sublime power of nature and often contrast with human arrogance. Nature appears larger than the individual and larger than any system of rational mastery.

This is why _Frankenstein_ is one of the best AP examples for a balanced argument about Romanticism:

- it reacts against confidence in reason alone
- it questions uncontrolled progress
- it values emotional and moral responsibility
- it uses the sublime to show nature’s power

One more important distinction: Romantic writers were not politically uniform. Wordsworth and Coleridge became more cautious. Shelley and Byron remained more radical. Goethe mixed emotional intensity with philosophical complexity. Mary Shelley questioned modern ambition through fiction rather than direct activism. Strong AP answers show this variation instead of treating Romanticism as one single political program.

### How to use this topic in AP Euro essays

This topic works especially well in **causation**, **comparison**, and **continuity/change** arguments.

For causation, explain that Romantic literature emerged because:

- Enlightenment rationalism left many writers dissatisfied
- the French Revolution raised hopes and then caused moral shock
- industrialization produced alienation, poverty, and hostility to mechanized life

For comparison, you can compare:

- early revolutionary enthusiasm versus later disillusionment
- Romantic criticism of industry versus Realist criticism
- writers who turned inward, like Wordsworth, versus writers who stayed politically radical, like Shelley and Byron

For continuity and change, note both:

- continuity: many writers continued to value liberty and the individual
- change: their tone shifted after the Terror and Napoleon, from optimism to doubt

A strong LEQ thesis might argue that Romantic writers responded to both revolution and industry by defending emotion, imagination, and nature against political violence and mechanized modernity, though they differed in whether they turned toward reflection, social criticism, or direct rebellion.

For a DBQ or LEQ, be specific with evidence. “Romantics liked nature” is weak. “Wordsworth used nature as a corrective to the spiritual emptiness of modern commercial life” is much stronger. “Blake criticized urban misery and child exploitation in _London_ and _The Chimney Sweeper_” is stronger still.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- Romanticism developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a reaction against pure Enlightenment rationalism
- Romantic writers emphasized emotion, imagination, nature, and individual experience
- The French Revolution of **1789** first inspired many writers with hopes of liberty and renewal
- The **Reign of Terror (1793–1794)** and Napoleon caused many Romantics to become disillusioned
- **Wordsworth** and **Coleridge** show the shift from revolutionary hope to caution
- **Shelley** and **Byron** remained more openly rebellious and linked Romanticism with liberty and nationalism
- **Blake** criticized industrial society through poems about urban suffering, oppression, and child labor
- Romantic attacks on industrialization often contrasted mechanized modern life with the moral power of nature
- The **sublime** described nature as vast, awe-inspiring, and sometimes terrifying
- **Mary Shelley’s** _Frankenstein_ warned about scientific ambition and progress without moral responsibility
- Romantic nationalism celebrated folk culture, history, and struggles for independence
- Romantic literary criticism of society differed from later **Realist** social criticism

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Romanticism
- individualism
- sublime
- industrialization
- nationalism


19th-Century Culture and Arts - Romantic writers addressed revolutions and industry