The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in philosophy, literature, music, painting, and architecture, as well as , that exist after and incorporate elements from the era of Romanticism.
It has been used with reference to late-19th-century composers such as Richard Wagner particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who describes his music as "a late flowering of romanticism in a positivist age". He regards it as synonymous with "the age of Wagner", from about 1850 until 1890—the start of the era of modernism, whose leading early representatives were Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler . It has been applied to writers, painters, and composers who rejected, abandoned, or opposed realism, naturalism, or avant-garde modernism at various points in time from about 1840 down to the present.
Late 19th century and early 20th century
Neo-romanticism as well as Romanticism is considered in opposition to naturalism—indeed, so far as music is concerned, naturalism is regarded as alien and even hostile . In the period following German unification in 1871, naturalism rejected Romantic literature as a misleading, idealistic distortion of reality. Naturalism in turn came to be regarded as incapable of filling the "void" of modern existence. Critics such as
Hermann Bahr,
Heinrich Mann, and
Eugen Diederichs came to oppose naturalism and
materialism under the banner of "neo-romanticism", demanding a cultural reorientation responding to "the soul's longing for a meaning and content in life" that might replace the fragmentations of modern knowledge with a holistic world view .
Late 20th century
"Neo-romanticism" was proposed as an alternative label for the group of German composers identified with the short-lived
New Simplicity movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Along with other phrases such as "new tonality", this term has been criticised for lack of precision because of the diversity among these composers, whose leading member is
Wolfgang Rihm .
Early 21st century
In the 21st century, "scientific neo-romanticism" refers to the interplay between the scientific discoveries, romantic philosophy and the concepts of informational reality of the modern era of computers and quantum computations. The scientific neo-romanticism term was coined by ,
[ (retrieved on July 2025)] which explores the interplay between information, meaning, and reality through a romantic-scientific perspective. Many of these films are inspired by the earlier work of Dr.S.V. Chekanov, particularly, in his 2024 book "The Designed World of Information: Unveiling the Incredible Realm Beyond".
[S. V. Chekanov, "The Designed World of Information: Unveiling the Incredible Realm Beyond". Ingram (2024). Print ISBN: 9798990642836; eBook ISBN: 9798990642829]
Britain
1880–1910
1930–1955
In British art history, the term "neo-romanticism" is applied to a loosely affiliated school of landscape painting that emerged around 1930 and continued until the early 1950s. It was first labeled in March 1942 by the critic
Raymond Mortimer in the
New Statesman. These painters looked back to 19th-century artists such as
William Blake and
Samuel Palmer, but were also influenced by French cubist and post-cubist artists such as
Pablo Picasso, André Masson, and Pavel Tchelitchew (; ). This movement was motivated in part as a response to the threat of invasion during World War II. Artists particularly associated with the initiation of this movement included Paul Nash, John Piper,
Henry Moore,
Ivon Hitchens, and especially Graham Sutherland. A younger generation included John Minton,
Michael Ayrton,
John Craxton,
Keith Vaughan,
Robert Colquhoun, and
Robert MacBryde .
United States
Western Europe
The
aesthetic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche has contributed greatly to neo-romantic thinking.
- Austria
- France
- Germany
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Italy
- Norway
Eastern Europe
- Belarusian
- Estonian
- Georgian
- Greece
- Hungarian
- Polish
- Russian
- Slovenian
Arab world
Within the Modern Arabic literature, neo-romanticism began in the early 20th century and flourished during the 1930s–1940s, that sought inspiration from French or English romantic poetry. Most famous its part is the
Mahjar ("
émigré" school) that includes
Arabic-language poets in the Americas
Ameen Rihani,
Kahlil Gibran,
Nasib Arida,
Mikhail Naimy, Elia Abu Madi, Fawsi Maluf, Farhat, and al-Qarawi. The neo-romantic current also involved poets in every Arabian country: Abdel Rahman Shokry, Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad and Ibrahim al-Mazini in Egypt, Omar Abu Risha in Syria, Elias Abu Shabaki and
Salah Labaki in Lebanon, Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi in Tunisia, and Al-Tijani Yusuf Bashir in Sudan.
India
In the Indian literature neo-romanticism was represented by the
Chhayavaad movement.
Japan
Beginning in the mid-1930s and continuing through World War II, a Japanese neo-romantic literary movement was led by the writer Yasuda Yojūrō .
In popular culture
See also
Modern manifestations
Further reading
British:
Indian
External links
