Romanticism

Romanticism is a very broad term, one more indicative of a direction of thought than of anything that could be termed a school or belief system. The Romantic Movement begins in the 18th. Century in Germany, in the 18th. Century with Rousseau in France, and in the late 18th. Century in England. Historian Jacques Barzun characterizes Romanticism as a reaction, not against Reason (that near-God of the Enlightenment) but against the "cold" intellect (intellect divorced from emotion). Many of the major figures were scholars (Goethe, Coleridge, even Shelley) and quite fond of Reason, but also in…