When the Romantic era started in Europe at the end of the 1800s, it was a time for art, literature, music, and philosophy. Most of the time, the Romantic era was at its peak between 1800 and 1850 in most places. When people think about Romanticism, they think about how it emphasizes emotions and individuality, as well as how it celebrates all things past and present, with a strong preference for the medieval over the classical. Industrialization, the Age of Enlightenment's social and political standards, and the scientific rationality of nature are all things that make up modernity. It was also a reaction to these things. This was long before the scottish association of writers.

It had a huge and complicated effect on politics, with romantic intellectuals having an effect on conservatism, liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism. The movement put a lot of emphasis on extreme emotions like fear, horror, and terror, as well as wonder, when it came to new aesthetic categories like the sublime and natural beauty. This was especially true when they came up against new aesthetic categories like the sublime and nature. It made not only folk art and historical traditions noble, but also spontaneity a good thing (as in the musical impromptu). Romanticism tried to avoid population growth, early urban development, and industrialism by bringing back medievalism and parts of art and narrative that were thought to be authentically medieval. This was in contrast to the Rationalism Classicism Enlightenment.

It was based on the German Sturm and Drang movement, which valued intuition and passion over the Enlightenment's rationalism. The events and beliefs of the French Revolution were also important because many early Romantics were cultural revolutionaries and sympathizers of the French Revolution. Romanticism put a lot of value on the achievements of "heroic" individuals and artists, and said that their example would help society improve. It also said that the human imagination was a big factor in how artists could break away from traditional ideas about form. There was a lot of emphasis on historical and natural inevitability, or "Zeitgeist," in the way it talked about its ideas. Realism was thought of as the opposite of Romanticism in the second half of the 19th century. When Romanticism died, it was because of a lot of things, like changes in the social and political world.

The value of the artist's unrestrained expression of emotions can help us understand Romanticism. In a quote from the German painter Caspar David Friedrich, he said that the artist's feelings are his guide. William Wordsworth believes that poetry should begin with "the spontaneous outpouring of great sentiments," which the poet may then "recollect in tranquility," resulting in a different but corresponding emotion that the poet can then use to create art.. To communicate these emotions, it was thought that the content of art should emerge from the artist's mind, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" laws defining what should be included in a work. A good creative artist's mind would instinctively follow a set of natural rules if left alone, according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other thinkers. Restriction was a factor, but it was also believed that using models from previous works would limit the creator's creativity, necessitating something new. In Romanticism, the idea of a genius or artist who was able to create something new from nothing was important, and it was considered the worst sin to be derivative. "Romantic distinctiveness" is a term for this.