Romanticism was a reaction against the Industrial Revolution. Romantic writers like Wordsworth and Byron believed that machines were dehumanizing people and taking away their individuality. They felt that industrialization was destroying the natural world, and they wanted to protect it.
Romanticism placed an emphasis on feeling, intuition, and emotion. Romantic writers often wrote about their own emotions and those of others in their poems and novels. They believed that the mind could be used to understand human nature, but they also emphasized feelings rather than reason as a way of understanding the world around us.
Romantic literature sought to return to a simpler, more natural way of life. Romantic authors often wrote about characters who lived in rural settings or in nature itself—places where no machines could exist or disturb their solitude with noise or pollution from factories located nearby (if there were any factories at all!).
Many Romantics believed in the power of the individual. They felt that humans were capable of great things if they were allowed to follow their hearts and do what they thought was right without being judged by others who might disagree with them (or worse yet—tell them what they should do).
