Characteristic of the Romantic Era Romanticism is a literary and artistic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that placed value on emotion or imagination over reason, on the imagination over society. Some sources say Romanticism started in reaction to neo-classicism, or the Enlightenment. The most important result of romanticism was the emphasis laid upon the supernatural. Some writers during this time period were Mary Shelley with Frankenstein, Edgar Allen Poe with various poems and selections, such as The Raven, The TellTale ....