It's a dirty word to some people, 'Romanticism'. It conjures all sorts of bad images; airy, shallow, irrational, wooly thinking, schmalzy. It can even carry dangerous political connotations; a reek of nationalism hangs over it. Deep England, and all the problems that entails. Much of this, I feel, has to do with a lack of general understanding about what Romanticism actually entails. It doesn't have anything to do with Romans, and it doesn't have anything to do with love...
"Romanticism has very little to do
with things popularly thought of as "romantic," although love may
occasionally be the subject of Romantic art. Rather, it is an
international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined
the fundamental ways in which people in Western cultures thought
about themselves and about their world." - source
