A significant period of the development of mankind in arts is Romanticism which begins in 1798, the year of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge ends in 1832.

Romanticism initiated by the English poets such as Coleridge and Wordsworth, as well as Blake, Keats, Shelley. Romanticism emphasized the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, the beautiful and rebellion against social conventions.

The main Characteristics of Romanticism are:
Imagination
Symbolism and Myth
Love of nature
Love of the common man
Neo-classicism
The supernatural
Nationalism
Heroism
Strange and far-away places

Imagination
The imagination was elevated to a position as the supreme faculty of the mind. This contrasted distinctly with the traditional arguments for the supremacy of reason. The Romantics tended to define and to present the imagination as our ultimate "shaping" or creative power, the approximate human equivalent of the creative powers of nature or even deity. It is dynamic, an active, rather than passive power, with many functions. Imagination is the primary faculty for creating all art. On a broader scale, it is also the faculty that helps humans to constitute reality, for (as Wordsworth suggested), we not only perceive the world around us, but also in part create it. Uniting both reason and feeling (Coleridge described it with the paradoxical phrase, "intellectual intuition"), imagination is extolled as the ultimate synthesizing faculty, enabling humans to reconcile differences and opposites in the world of appearance.

Symbolism and Myth 
Symbolism and myth were given great prominence in the Romantic conception of art. In the Romantic view, symbols were the human aesthetic correlatives of nature's emblematic language. They were valued too because they could simultaneously suggest many things, and were thus thought superior to the one-to-one communications of allegory. Partly, it may have been the desire to express the "inexpressible"--the infinite--through the available resources of language that led to symbol at one level and myth (as symbolic narrative) at another.

Love of Nature
"Nature" meant many things to the Romantics. As suggested above, it was often presented as itself a work of art, constructed by a divine imagination, in emblematic language. For example, throughout "Song of Myself," Whitman makes a practice of presenting commonplace items in nature--"ants," "heap'd stones “and” poke-weed"--as containing divine elements, and he refers to the "grass" as a natural "hieroglyphic," "the handkerchief of the Lord." While particular perspectives with regard to nature varied considerably--nature as a healing power, nature as a source of subject and image, nature as a refuge from the artificial constructs of civilization, including artificial language--the prevailing views accorded nature the status of an organically unified whole.
Emotions and instinct became more important than reason. There was a glorification of “The Natural Man”, the “noble savage,” and the primitive and untutored personality. Primitivism, meaning the thought that the simple and unsophisticated life was best, also grew popular. These ideas led to an interest in old civilizations, glorification of Greek society, a study in archeology developed as a science, with Egyptian and Medieval areas important to study. Also, the medieval studies, urged by nationalism, helped nations develop identity, which was an important aspect of Romantic Period ideas.

Love of the Common Man
The social and economic classes were disparaged, or put down. An era of revolutions opened when the governments were overthrown, due to the fact that it often seemed to require elimination of social classes. The American writers also provided a way to satisfy a cultural need for lore, or a mythology suitable to a new nation. The literature presented this in many pieces.

Neo-Classicism
Neo-Classicism means a return to the Classic ideals of: clearness, elegance, symmetry, and repose produced by attention to traditional forms. It was sometimes synonymous with excellence or artistic quality of high distinction. Also, the term refers to the admiration and imitation of Greek and Roman literature, art, and architecture.

The Supernatural
Fascination with the supernatural was a characteristic of the Romantic Period. This included: the unexplainable, horror, ghosts, fairies, witches, demons. The shadows of the mind—dreams & madness and anything that evoked the emotion of fear. The romantics rejected materialism in pursuit of spiritual self-awareness. They yearned for the unknown and the unknowable.Pity-William Blak, 1795 Pity
Nationalism
Nationalism was a reaction against the dominating influences of German literature. Writers aimed to write works which were expressive and characteristic of their own nationality by: using scenes from their country’s life, history, folk-tales and legends as a basis for operas, songs, literature, and symphonic poems.

Heroism
The idea that anyone, especially the common man, could be a hero is a characteristic of the Romantic Period. Heroism is the overcoming of our natural fears and limitations to achieve great things
In another way, of course, Romanticism created its own literary types. The hero-artist has already been mentioned; there were also heaven-storming types from Prometheus to Captain Ahab, outcasts from Cain to the Ancient Mariner and even Hester Prynne, and there was Faust, who wins salvation in Goethe's great drama for the very reasons--his characteristic striving for the unattainable beyond the morally permitted and his insatiable thirst for activity--that earlier had been viewed as the components of his tragic sin. (It was in fact Shelley's opinion that Satan, in his noble defiance, was the real hero of Milton's Paradise Lost.)Strange and Far-away Places This characteristic relates to the love of exotic locations around the world and in time and space. This could include the past or the future as well as strange places or situations in the present.