1. Religion in the Romantic Period

1. Romantics sought the foundations of religion in the emotions of humankind.
2. Reacting to anticlericalism of both the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, these thinkers saw religious faith, experience, and institutions as central to human life.
3. Methodism—which emerged in min-eighteenth century England—is an example of a religion characterized by Romantic impulses.

2. Methodism 

        1.  John Wesley was the leader

1. Studied at Oxford to be an Anglican priest, he formed a religious group known as the Holy Club
2. Methodist preachers emphasized the role of enthusiastic, emotional experience as part of Christian conversion

3. Making Comparisons: Enlightened and Romantic Views of Religion

1. The Enlightenment embraced a mechanical view of human nature and the physical world. Enlightened thinkers rejected faith and instead relied on a rational, scientific approach to understand the relationship between human beings and the natural world. The Enlightenment favored the deist view that a distant God created the natural world and like a “divine watchmaker” stepped back from his creation and humanity’s daily concerns.

2. The romantics believed in a loving, personal God. They stressed emotions, inner faith, and religious inspiration. Romantics embraced the wonders and mysteries of nature as a way to feel the divine presence.

4. Romanticism and Nationalism

1. As romantic writers studied the past, they helped make people aware of their common heritage. The resurgence of national feeling sparked nationalist movements across Europe. The first stirring was felt in Greece.

2. Greek Independence

1. The Greek revolt against the Ottoman Empire began in 1821.
2. While the revolutions in Spain and Italy failed because of great power intervention, the Greek revolt succeeded because of the support of Great Britain, France, and Russia. These nations all wanted to expand their influence in the Balkans. They were also influenced by public support for Greece because of its historic importance as the birthplace of Western civilization.

3. German idealism
   1. A distinctive feature of Romanticism in Germany was its glorification of both the individual person and individual cultures.

4. Herder and Culture
   1. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803)
      1. Disgusted that French culture was dominant in Germany
      2. Went in search of Germany’s past in order to glorify German culture
      3. Influential essay “On the Knowing and Feelings of the Human Soul”
         1. Rejected the mechanical explanation of nature
         2. He saw human beings and societies as developing rather than tied to a set of laws
      4. Revived German folk culture by urging the collection and preservation of distinctive German songs and sayings
         1. Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm became famous for their collection of German fairy tales.

2. Herder rejected the idea of a “common language” or universal institutions

5. Islam, The Middle East, and Romanticism

1. While new religious, literary, and historical sensibilities of the Romantic period modified European understanding of both Islam and the Arab world, long-standing attitudes were still preserved.

2. Many Methodist-like forms of Protestantism and emotional Roman Catholicism renewed the sense of necessary conflict between Christianity and Islam.
   1. Chateaubriand
      1. “emotional” Roman Catholic who wrote a travelogue about a journey from Paris to Jerusalem
      2. While serving in the French parliament, he invoked the concept of a crusade against the Muslim world in a speech on the danger posed by the Barbary pirates in North Africa.
   2. Artists depict “nostalgic” European moments from the Crusades
   3. Novelists wrote many stories from the crusades
      1. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Tales of the Crusaders (1825)
   4. Romanticism also cast the Ottoman Empire and Islam in an unfavorable light and some poets championed the cause of the Greek Revolution and revived older charges of Ottoman despotism.
3. Other Romantics encouraged European to see the Muslim world in a more positive fashion.
   1. Many nineteenth- century Europeans read stories from The Thousand and One Nights, which first appeared in English in 1778 from a French translation.
      1. Romantics abandoned classical models and embraced folk stories, and many found Arabian Nights as mysterious and exotic.

4. Napoleon’s contributions to European perception of Islam and the Middle East
   1. With the invasion of Egypt in 1798, the study of the Arab world became an important area of interest among French intellectuals.
      1. Napoleon imported top French scholars to Egypt and had them communicate with the most educated people they could meet there.
      2. Napoleon personally met with Islamic leaders and had all of his speeches and proclamations translated into Arabic.
      3. Napoleon’s scholars produced a twenty-three volume Description of Egypt (1809-1828), which concentrated largely on ancient Egypt.
      4. Napoleon claimed that the French military occupation of Egypt was a mission to liberate Egypt from the military dictatorship of the Ottoman Empire.
   2. Rosetta Stone was discovered in Egypt during the French expedition there
      1. It led to the decipherment of ancient Egypt’s hieroglyphic writing