Romantyzm i rewolucja (przemysłowa)

Abstract

The author discusses the influence of the Industrial Revolution on the birth and development of the Romantic movement in Europe. As he emphasised, the adjective “Romantic” refers to a notion that is far removed from the material concreteness of industrial civilisation. It referred to fantasy and fairy tales, which were associated with the Medieval culture and folklore. The period, in which Romanticism may be located, are the years 1795–1860, an era when one could witness the economic transformations that accompanied political, social, intellectual, and artistic ones. The values of that time are defined by the achievements of natural sciences in the theoretical aspect, while technology is presented in the sphere of practical results. The socio-economic formation of the second half of the eighteenth century also involves the economic transition from feudalism to capitalism, which meant transforming several manufacturing technologies and products along with the changes in the relationships within the human community. From the end of the Age of Enlightenment, social awareness was characterised by: inconsistent departure from Enlightenment rationalism, idealism and ‘romanticism’ in art or customs, new religious trends, changing meanings of the words people and nation, socialist utopias, Marx’s historical materialism, and the crystallisation of the philosophical ideas of Western European positivism. At the same time, the technology of capitalist industrialism started to overtake nature, taming the irregular and haphazard forces of nature and transforming them into purposeful and repeatable ones, turning short-lived phenomena (e.g. an electrical discharge in the form of lightning) into continuous processes (e.g. the functioning of a power generator).