The Age of Enlightenment—also called the Age of Reason—was a time of intellectual and philosophical advancement in Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau championed the use of reason and individual liberty. Their writings were a reaction to traditional scholasticism, in which philosophy is based on authority and revelation, not rationality. The Enlightenment is also used to refer to the intellectual and cultural movement in Europe during that period. Because of the Protestant Reformation, Europe had been swept into religious wars for centuries. The new ideas of the Age of Enlightenment came about in part as a reaction to those conflicts, and among those ideas were the progressive understanding of social class and social roles, especially expectations for women.

The Romantics, on the other hand, were a group of artists and writers in the early 19th century who reacted against the Enlightenment and stressed emotion and intuition. The Romantics proposed that all knowledge must begin with sensations, which are then organized by the mind. The Enlightenment was more interested in science and logic, while the Romantic movement focused on nature and the spiritual realm. For example, Clara’s association of nature and emotion with the spiritual is typical of

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