Romanticism
n. an artistic and intellectual movement in Europe and America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that, broadly, stressed the values of imagination, spontaneity, wonder, and emotional self-expression over the classical standards of balance, order, restraint, proportion, and objectivity. Its name derives from romance, the literary form in which desires, dreams, and idealistic challenges and adventures prevail over mundane realities. As a reaction in part against the scientific and technological advances of the time, Romanticism can be viewed as a precursor to humanistic movements in psychology (see humanism; humanistic psychology).