The Enlightenment period -- a focus on experience and rationality of the human being helped to spark the American and French revolutions and a great literary movement, which brought forth Frankenstein and the great poetry of Keats, Shelley, and Byron. Europe's old order was broken and in that void came a positive view of the possibilities for man governing himself. Of course, romanticism celebrates the human condition in a way that contrasted with earlier views of man's place as fixed in society. Self-determination and its benefits and limitations intrigued the romantic mind of the 18-19th centuries.
