Romanticism is a term applied to a movement in literature and the arts that arose in Europe in the late 18th century and emphasized imagination and emotion over reason and intellect. Although the term has been applied to a wide variety of literary, artistic, and musical works, a work is typically identified as "Romantic" if it espouses one or more of the following themes:
- a belief in the innate goodness of man in his natural state;
- individualism;
- reverence for nature;
- exaltation of emotion, sensation, and physical passion; and
- a revolt against political authority and social convention.
(Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, 4th ed., p. 884)
Romantic themes can be found in the work of philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, poets such as William Blake, John Keats, and Walt Whitman, and novelists such as George Sand and Herman Melville. For further information, see also the Library Guide to Literary Criticism.
To Find Books
Use the MERLIN Library Catalog and the MOBIUS Union Catalog to find resources relevant to your research. Relevant works can be found using subject headings (Library of Congress) such as:
Materials relevant to the study of Romantic literature may also be found by specifying the country of origin and literary genre in which you are interested, or by identifying broader themes in literature in which the Romantics were interested, for example:- American Poetry - 19th Century - History and Criticism
- English Literature - 19th Century - History and Criticism
- Desire in Literature
- Nature in Literature
- Philosophy in Literature
Finally, materials relevant to the study of Romantic literature may be found by using the names of related authors as subject headings, for example:
- Blake, William, 1757-1827
- Bronte, Emily, 1818-1848
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834
- Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822
- Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892
- Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797
To find the location of a book in Miller Nichols Library, see the Location Guide.
To Find Articles
Remote (off-campus) access to databases is available only to UMKC students, faculty, and staff. All other users must access online resources within the Libraries. Begin searching by selecting a database. After selection you will be prompted to provide a UMKC Single Sign-On user name and password OR a 9-digit UMKC ID number followed by the letter k (example: 0123456789k) and last name, as needed.
-
Academic Search Premier (EBSCOhost) 1975 - present.
Save to del.icio.us
Selected full text 1975 - present.
This multidisciplinary database indexes and abstracts journals in a broad range of subjects. Full text is available for a large proportion of the titles. A high percentage of titles are peer-reviewed. Dates of coverage vary widely by title. All content of Academic Search Elite is included in this resource. - Humanities Index (1974-1997)
Ref Z5579 .H8 - ISI Web of Science
Note: This database is no longer be available.. Permits multidisciplinary searching for articles from international academic journals in the sciences, social sciences, and the arts and humanities. This combined database for the Science Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index offers cited reference searching. Link to ISI Web of Science user's guide. - JSTOR 1838 - present. Save to del.icio.us
Full text. Coverage varies by title..Contains fully searchable scanned articles from selected journals in a broad range of disciplines, including African-American studies, art, ecology, economics, education, history, law, literature, music, general science, sociology, and statistics. (To see a complete list of discipines and journal titles, link to the JSTOR browse list.) Covers the full run of journals from the first issue of volume one; however, the most recent three to five years of journals are not generally available. - MLA International Bibliography (Chadwyck-Healey) 1884 - present. Save to del.icio.usAn index to scholarship in literature, linguistics, film, folklore, and cultural
studies. The print version of this bibliography is available in the Miller Nichols
Library and
covers 1921 - 1999. The location and call number are Reference Index Wall Z7006
.M64. See the MLA
Directory of Periodicals for a list of periodicals indexed.
University Libraries Photocopying and Printing Services
Reference Sources: Encyclopedias, Handbooks, Directories, Statistics, Bibliographies
Reference sources are useful for locating background information, definitions, general descriptions, and basic facts. Use these books to help you select or focus your research topic.
All call numbers in this guide refer to the UMKC Miller Nichols Library, unless otherwise noted. Titles are linked to the corresponding MERLIN Library Catalog record.
Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
| Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia | Ready Ref PN41 .B4 |
| Britain in the Hanoverian age, 1714-1837 : An Encyclopedia | Ref DA480 .B75 |
| Dictionary
of Literary Biography (1980-) Includes numerous volumes relevant to the study of Romantic poetry and prose. Provides bio-bibliographies of Romantic writers. |
Ready Ref PN451 .D434 |
| A
Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory |
Ref PN41 .C83 |
| Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century | Ref PS316 .E63 |
| The Encyclopedia of Romanticism: Culture in Britain, 1780s-1830s | Ref DA529 .E53 |
| Encyclopedia of the Novel (2 vols.) | Ref PN41 .E53 |
| Ref PN1021 .N39 |
Bibliographies
| Critical Survey of Literary Theory (4 vols.) | Ref PN45 .C74 |
| English Romantic Poetry: An Annotated Bibliography | Z2014.P7 A9 |
| Nineteenth-Century
Literature Criticism (1981- ) Multi-volume collection of excerpts from the criticism of writers who died between 1800-1900, from the first published criticism to the present. |
Ready Ref PN761 .N5 |
| The
Romantic Movement (1979- ) A selective and critical bibliography of the literature of the Romantic Movement, focussing on English and Continental Romanticism, but also including some materials on American Romanticism. |
Ref PN603 .R6 |
| The
Romantic Movement Bibliography, 1936-1970 (7 vols.) A master cumulation from ELH, Philological quarterly, and English language notes. |
Ref Z6514 .R6 R65 |
| Romantic Poetry by Women: A Bibliography, 1770-1835 | Ref PR508 .W6 J33 |
Additional Sources
| Daily Life in Victorian England | DA533 .M675 |
| English Romanticism: The Human Context | PR590 .G38 |
| Writers
and Philosophers: A Sourcebook of Philosophical Influences on Literature |
Ref PN49 .T447 |
Note: More specific reference sources and biographical materials may be found by using an author's name as a subject heading [e.g., A Blake Dictionary (Ref PR4146 .A24); Byron: A Biography (PR4381 .M33)].
Web Resources
- Literary
Resources - Romantic
Jack Lynch, Rutgers University
(andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/romantic.html)
- Romantic Links,
Electronic Texts and Home Pages
University of Pennsylvania
(www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Romantic/index.html)
- Romanticism on the Net (RoN)
(www.ron.umontreal.ca/)
- The Wordsworth Trust
Wordsworth, Coleridge and many other writers
(www.wordsworth.org.uk/)
- Victoria Research Web
(victorianresearch.org/)
- Voice of the Shuttle -
English Literature
(vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=3)
Use search engines linked on the Internet Search Tools page to identify additional Web resources.
For further assistance, please contact the
Miller Nichols Library Reference Desk at (816) 235-1534.
