CLASSISM VS ROMANTICISM

	CLASSISM	ROMANTICISM
1.	Feature of the seventeenth and eighteenth century	Feature of the nineteenth century
2.	Appeal to Reason	Appeals to Reason and Emotions
3.	Normal and typical approach	Individual approach
4.	Suspicion and horror of the unknown	Dissatisfaction with the known, interest in remote times and places – middle ages – idealized the revival of ballad, gothic and historical novel
5.	Clear and ordered expression and form. A belief in beauty of measured precision.	Experimentation with musicality and color in expression
6.	Emphasis on content and idea	Emphasis on feeling and emotional reactions.
7.	Emphasis on the measurable and determined.	Emphasis on the immeasurable and undetermined.
8.	Importance of universal thoughts and ideas.	Importance of particular and individual thoughts and ideas.
9.	Love of man’s accomplishments in taming and controlling the wild and rebellious in nature.	Love of external nature in its wild and primitive state. Nature is looked upon as a moral teacher. To return to nature was to return to what was most instinctive and spontaneous and what was best in humanity.
10.	Acceptance of tradition of earlier classical periods particularly those of ancient Greek and Roman cultures.	Rejection of tradition – except from earlier romantic periods (sixteenth century in particular primitive folk cultures, renaissance development on idealized historical association).
11.	Concern with only the creamier sections of society – aristocrats, the nobility, and the intellectual class.	Interest in the life of the common man. They believed that the life of the rustic was richer than the nobleman. E.g., Wordsworth’s ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballads’.
12.	A lot of control exercised with matters of trade.	In political economy the ‘Doctrine of Laissez Faire’ (noninterference).
13.	An age where rationalism was the watchword.	Eighteenth century rationalism was overthrown by Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (1781). Human Reason can deal only with the phenomena; it is powerless in realm of ultra-rational ideas such as God, freedom and immorality.