The French Revolution and Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo (1815) brought about a new movement known as Romanticism, which began to flourish in France. Romanticism was a creative and intellectual movement that ran from the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century. A movement that stressed emotion, freedom and individual imagination. The Romantics formed a club called the Cenacle, in which Victor Hugo was the chief poet and Sainte-Beuve the chief critic. Political divisions became less prominent, and literary sympathies alone formed the bond of the union.
Romanticism has been defined in various ways, by both its advocates and by the historians who sought-after to be impartial. It was absolutely a revolt against the social