Ultra-romanticism

Ultra-romanticism (in Portuguese, "Ultra-romantismo"), was a Portuguese literary movement in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was typified by a tendency to exaggerate, at times to a ridiculous degree, the norms and ideals of Romanticism, namely the value of subjectivity, individualism, amorous idealism, nature and the medieval world. The ultra-romantics generated literary works of highly contendable quality, some of them being considered as “romance of knife and earthenware bowl”, given the succession of bloody crimes that they invariably described, which realists fiercely denounced.

Some ultra-romantic literature of unquestioned quality exists, however. João de Deus, Camilo Castelo Branco, Soares de Passos and Castilho are ultra-romantic writers. In some works of Almeida Garrett and Alexandre Herculano it is already possible to detect some traces of ultra-romanticism, although they were two of the first romantics in Portugal.

*August António Soares de Passos was a Portuguese poet who was born at Porto in 1826 and died there in 1860. His verses were very popular and were typified by sentimentality and exaggerated melancholy. His most popular poem is "O Noivado do Sepulcro" ("the Engagement of the Tomb”).
*António Feliciano Castilho, a Portuguese writer of neoclassical training, eventually gave in to the trend of Romanticism, producing several works in this style. He obtained most distinction as a kind of godfather for young poets at the start of their in exercising an influence in their negotiations with the publishing companies. The Questão Coimbrã was a result of the clash of ideas between Feliciano Castilho and some young intellectuals such as Antero de Quental and Eça de Queiroz who challenged the principles of the romantic generation, and declared a desire to expand Portuguese literature, turning it into an instrument of renewal that would use open criticism to alert the government to the deficiencies of the country and so bring about the necessary evolution.
*Camilo Castelo Branco was a paradigm of Portuguese culture of the nineteenth century. A multifaceted man, considered by some as the first romantic of the Iberian Peninsula, he left a vast collection of works, a product of the passions and vicissitudes of life. His was a frustrated existence with a tragic end, and the value of his work remained unrecognised until years after his death.

General characteristics

*Creative liberty (the content is more important then the form; grammatical rules often ignored);
*Free versification;
*Doubt, dualism;
*Constant repugnance, morbidness, suffering, pessimism, Satanism, masochism, cynicism, self-destruction;
*Denial of reality in favour of the world of dreams, fancy and imagination (escapism, evasion);
*Adolescent disillusion;
*Idealization of love and women;
*Subjectivity, egocentricity;
*"Saudosismo" (an untranslatable word meaning homesickness or longing) for childhood and the past;
*A preference for the nocturnal;
*Conscience of solitude;
*Death: total and definitive escape from life, an end to suffering; sarcasm, irony.

Ultra-Romantic bands

*Seduced by Suicide (Rock) www.seducedbysuicide.com

"This article draws on material from the Portuguese wiki http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-romantismo"