Romanticization

Romanticization is the act of treating a subject as more desirable or attractive than it is in reality.^{[2] [3]} Common subjects of romanticization in popular culture include nature,^[4] crime,^[5] abuse,^[6] mental illness,^[7] war,^[8] and history. Historical romance is a genre of historical fiction which involves such romanticization to amplify the experience of love,^[9] and according to Anita Desai, myth itself is a romanticization of history.^[10] Romanticization is often associated with nostalgia, the concept of longing for the past, although the two terms are not synonymous.^[11] While nostalgia is known for its tendency to romanticize,^[12] it can also arise from genuine memory.^[13]

Romanticize derives from the word romantic .^[14] According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the English word romanticize dates to an 1818 letter by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, thus the historian Carl Thompson considers him to have coined the word.^[15] The German translation of the word, romantisieren, was previously coined in the 1797–98 writings of the poet Novalis in a series of terms related to his new definition of the romantisch. Novalis wrote that:^[16]

By conferring on secret things an elevated meaning, on the everyday a mysterious prestige, on the known the dignity of the unknown, on the finite the appearance of the infinite, I romanticize them.

A leading member of the Romantic movement in Germany, Novalis sought to imbue the concept of the romantic with a deeper significance by highlighting untruth or strangeness as its defining characteristic.^[17]

The romanticization of violence has persisted across periods of human history and unto the present day, despite living alongside a desire to eradicate it.^[18] The tradition of Bronze Age poetry which emerged in ancient Greece, the ancient Near East, and beyond evidently display such romanticization.^[19]

The history of the romanticization of war in fiction can be traced through the Iliad , medieval romances, Shakespeare's plays, and the emergence of war memoirs in the 19th century,^[20] but according to literary historians Paul Fussell and Yuval Noah Harari, this romanticization in literature slowly ended following the devastating impact of the First and Second World Wars.^[21] The romanticized view of war is still prevalent in cultural and political discourse, where war is often seen as a worthwhile mean to the end of a constructive legacy^[22] and romanticized narratives of war can help governments to recruit citizens to fight as soldiers.^[23]

• Nostalgia
• Imagination

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles containing German-language text
• CS1 German-language sources (de)