Romanticism was a literary and poetic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Romantic poets reacted against the Age of Enlightenment with its focus on logic, reason, and scientific inquiry. They emphasized feeling and nature and placed more importance on imagination than reason. Romanticism produced many of the stereotypes of poets and poems that still dominate culture today, like the image of a poet as a tortured visionary and the idea of poetry as an act of spontaneous creativity. Shelley demonstrated these ideals through “A Defence of Poetry.”

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the Romantic movement started, but the period is generally thought to have started in the 1780s and lasted until the 1832 Reform Act in England. British Romanticism, the specific movement that Percy Shelley belonged to, emphasized the creative spontaneity of poetry and imagination. Like most artistic ages, Romanticism was a reaction against the preceding Age of Enlightenment and the Augustan Age, which glorified the Roman emperor Augustus and the art produced in his era.

There are several main tenets of the Romantic movement. First is an emphasis on emotional and imaginative spontaneity, with the belief that imagination moved the poet and poems came from an outburst of inspiration.