Romanticism

Romanticism was reasonable the largest artistic movement of the late 1700s.No other period displays more variety in style, theme, and content such as this movement. Romanticism stresses on self-expression and individual uniqueness that does not lend itself to precise definition. Some characteristics of this period are the following:

a) Strong senses, emotions, and feelings

• Romantics believed that knowledge is gained through intuition rather than deduction. This is best summed up by Wordsworth who stated that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

b) Importance of imagination

• Romantics legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority. 

c) idealization of women and children

• These were the people who worked for pennies in the many factories springing up as a part of industry.  Even if a woman was pregnant, to stop working was not an option.

d) the supernatural and the occult

• "Supernatural" referred to anything above or beyond the norm in this world.  During that time, God was considered to be supernatural, as well as ghosts, witches, spirits, etc.

Famous romantic writers

William Blake (1757 – 1827)

• Blake is famous not only for his poems, but for the illuminated plates on which he printed them. His most famous works are likely those in Songs of Innocence and of Experience.  The poems often function in pairs, one from the perspective of childlike “innocence,” the other from the perspective of disillusioned “experience.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• Had a religious sense of mission. Although many accused him of subverting Christianity, he explained that, for him "to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the church. Emerson's philosophy has been called contradictory, and it is true that he consciously avoided building a logical intellectual system because such a rational system would have negated his Romantic belief in intuition and flexibility.

Edgar Allan Poe

• Poe is as well known for his lifestyle as for his work. He is quite famous for being dissipated, marrying cousins, and things like that. We find in Poe the dark side of the romantic transcendentalists in Poe and in Hawthorne.Poe is very gothic. "Ligeia," "The Raven," and "The Fall of the House of Usher" are all very gothic works. 
• Beyond horror, Poe also wrote satires, humor tales, and hoaxes. For comic effect, he used irony and ludicrous extravagance, often in an attempt to liberate the reader from cultural conformity. 

Point of View

• Many people believe that romantic period is about love, but is NOT about it. Romanticism rejects the classical emphasis on order and rationality. Readers should know that this period is about personal freedom, abstract settings, the gothic as nightmare world of intense emotions; such as Edgar Allan Poe, also, desire as personal motivation. We can't put  definitions of Romantic and Love in the same page, there are totally different, opposite.