Romantic realism is an aesthetic

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

 term that usually refers to art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 which combines elements of both romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 and realism

Realism (arts)

Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...

. The terms "romanticism" and "realism" have been used in varied ways, and are sometimes seen as opposed to one another.

Romantic realism in literature and art

The term has long standing in literary criticism. For example, Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

's relationship to romantic realism is analyzed in Ruth M. Stauffer's 1922 book Joseph Conrad: His Romantic Realism. Liam O'Flaherty

Liam O'Flaherty

Liam O'Flaherty was a significant Irish novelist and short story writer and a major figure in the Irish literary renaissance, born August 28, 1896, died September 7, 1984.-Biography:...

's relationship to romantic realism is discussed in P.F. Sheeran's book The Novels of Liam O'Flaherty: A Study in Romantic Realism. Fyodor Dostoyevsky is described as a romantic realist in Donald Fanger's book, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism: A Study of Dostoevsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol. Historian Jacques Barzun

Jacques Barzun

Jacques Martin Barzun is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United...

 argued that romanticism was falsely opposed to realism and declared that "...the romantic realist does not blink his weakness, but exerts his power."

The term also has long standing in art criticism. Art scholar John Baur described it as "a form of realism modified to express a romantic attitude or meaning". According to Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....

, the term "romantic realism" was used by Joseph Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels

Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...

 to define the official doctrine of the art produced in Nazi Germany, although this usage did not achieve wide currency.

The writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

/philosopher

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....

 described herself as a romantic realist, and many followers of her Objectivist

Objectivism (Ayn Rand)

Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...

 philosophy who work in the arts apply this term to themselves. Rand defined romantic realism as a portrayal of life "as it could be and should be." She wrote: "The method of romantic realism is to make life more beautiful and interesting than it actually is, yet give it all the reality, and even a more convincing reality than that of our everyday existence." (See also Objectivist Aesthetics).

"Realism" in music is often associated with the use of music for the depiction of objects, whether they be real (as in Bedrich Smetana

Bedrich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country's aspirations to independent statehood. He is thus widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music...

's "Peasant Wedding" of Die Moldau) or mythological (as in Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's Ring cycle). Musicologist Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin is an American-Russian musicologist, music historian, and critic who has written about the theory of performance, Russian music, fifteenth-century music, twentieth-century music, nationalism, the theory of modernism, and analysis. As a choral conductor he directed the Columbia...

 discusses what he calls the "black romanticism" of Niccolo Paganini

Niccolò Paganini

Niccolò Paganini was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was one of the most celebrated violin virtuosi of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique...

 and Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

, i.e., the development and use of musical techniques that can be used to depict or suggest "grotesque" creatures or objects, such as the "laugh of the devil

Devil

The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...

," to create a "frightening atmosphere." Thus, Taruskin's "black romanticism" is a form of "Romantic realism" deployed by nineteenth-century virtuosi with the intent of invoking fear or "the sublime

Sublime (philosophy)

In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...

."