Concerning a definition of Romanticism, it is made clear in the passage that nobody agrees on anything about this movement
Romanticism developed in parallel to the Enlightenment
nobody has ever attempted to define exactly what it was
it's difficult to define the term and there's much disagreement
it had many ideas in common with the Enlightenment
It may be inferred from the passage that Romantics believed that human beings were not capable of understanding and controlling nature
the Enlightenment produced many important and useful ideas
an ordered society was more important than any individual person
the human mind could understand and analyze the natural world
it was possible for humans to construct an ordered and rational society
The Sorrows of Werther. was written in 1774 as a textbook on Romanticism
apparently caused many people to kill themselves
was little-known when written, but is quite famous today
is acknowledged as the book which created Romanticism overnight
was the true story of a man who killed himself for love
97 I WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT? The Roman writer Seneca once commented: "All things are cause either for laughter or weeping." The 18th-century French dramatist Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais echoed Seneca's words by stating: "I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep." Both Seneca and Beaumarchais understood that laughing and crying are closely related emotional responses to some kind of outside stimulus. They knew that in life, as in drama, comedy and tragedy are never far apart. Both laughing and crying serve to release tension. Laughter, like weeping, is a reflex action rooted in the central nervous system and its related hormones. It is expressed in the contraction of certain facial muscles and in altered breathing patterns. The stimulus that brings forth laughter is called humour. To define laughter and humour in this way, however, is to leave unanswered two questions: firstly, why do people laugh; and secondly, just what is funny, or humorous? The questions are difficult to answer because emotions and the reasons for them are not easily analyzed.