Romanticism refers to the profound shift in Western attitudes to art and human creativity that dominated much of European culture in the first half of the 19th century， and that has shaped most subsequent developments in literature-even those reacting against it， such as the opinions of T. S. Eliot and T. E. Hulme.The task of providing a viable definition for the cultural and literary phenomenon called "Romanticism- has never been easy， as it is， the vexed question of what salient attributes constitute this literary phenomenon has been answered in a variety of ways by different literary critics in England and America， but no solution has been satisfactory to all subsequent critics and readers. Isaiah Berlin， in his lectures entitled "The Roots of Romanticism"， wisely evades the problem of generalizing or defining romanticism. He quotes Northrop Frye's statement to the effect that any generalization on romanticism would be met with "countervailing evidence" from great writers of antiquity. On the contrary， he contents himself with only assessing the importance of this literary movement by stating that "the importance of romanticism is that it is the largest recent movement to transform the lives and the thought of the Westem world.
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