Book 3, Part 2, From Rousseau to the Present Day: Chapter 18, The Romantic Movement Summary and Analysis

The romantic period in literature was filled with certain feeling and such filling was acknowledged as part of romantic movement of the eighteenth century. The romantic movement had little to do with philosophy at first.

The most important figure of this period was Rousseau although he only reaffirmed already existing tendencies. People recognized something they associated with emotion of sympathy. Such emotion was characterized as violent and disconnected from thought. The division between the poor and the rich was pronounced and the poor were considered as more virtuous than the rich. The poor lived from their own labor and were of more interest to romantics.

The existing sensibility was easily influenced by writers such as Rousseau, who himself had...