Romanticism

Romanticism (or the **Romantic Era**) was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe. The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror and terror and awe —especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories.

 French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a major Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. He believed that people in the state of nature were innocent and at their best and that they were corrupted by the unnaturalness of civilization.

"The first man who had fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." //Discourse on Inequality (1754)//

//Frankenstein// by Mary Shelley

"Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft, In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the wood How often has my spirit turned to thee!