John Keats

“Romanticism is precisely situated in neither the choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling.” – Charles Baudelaire

After the Enlightenment, there came a period in art dominated by those who rebelled against the growing middle class values and shunned patronage of any sort. This movement is known as Romanticism. These are the artists, poets, authors, and composers who believed in revealing the importance of emotion over reason. Romantics saw the beauty in nature and praised it, while an industrial revolution went on around them. The painters would portray never seen images, and musicians departed from the form and order of the Enlightenment by creating operas, dramas set to music. The focus of all these works was to stir emotions, rather than appeal to the popular tastes of people. Romantics were not concerned with being praised, they wanted to people to be changed by listening or looking at their works. This was especially obvious in the literature of the ...