Romanticisms:
 
A famous essay by A.O. Lovejoy, "On the Discrimination of Romanticisms" (1921), remains a terrible warning to the facile generalizer about the topic. But it may be useful to pick out some recurring strains for attention:
 
1. The individual subject as the focus of attention;
 
2. The imagination as a source of knowledge;
 
3. Isolation and solitude;
 
4. Revolution--in politics (America and France), in art, in religion;
 
5. The natural world as a potential source of value;
 
6. The reworking of myth or creation of new myth;
 
7. The concern with intense, unusual, or repressed experiences.
 
For background reading on Romanticism there are two excellent books by M.H. Abrams which you might wish to dip into, if not read entire:
 
The Mirror and the Lamp (1953)
Natural Supernaturalism (1971)

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return to Frankenstein questions.
http://www.utm.edu/~lalexand/frankqst.htm