Differences between Enlightenment and Romantic thought

Enlightenment Literature was heavily indebted to the contemporary trends in philosophical and scientific thinking: as such, it emphasised logical and rational discourse, as a way of understanding the world. Philosophers like Kant and Voltaire opposed both faith based governance and morality, in favour of reason. This led to a heavy emphasis on epistolary literature, like Richardson's Clarissa, an abundance of Odes to figures like Newton and the first dictionaries and encyclopaediae.

In contrast, the Romantic period kicked back against this. Instead of reason and Kantian ethics, the Romantics found morality to be mutable and individualistic; the scientific values of the enlightenment and the industrial revolution were disavowed in favour of the naturalism of Wordsworth's 'Prelude' and Keats' 'To Autumn.' Natural spaces in these poems are liminal, exploring the boundaries of human endevour, where Enlightenment works, satires, political essays, etc., firmly entrenched themselves in society. In short, Romanticism seeks to find the role of the individual in a chaotic and mutable world, while the Enlightenment looks for the empirical and justifiable strictures of such a world.

Some more interesting ideas here:

https://medium.com/illumination/enlightenment-and-romanticism-89f9d65f186d

Abstract from a new(ish) book by Robert D Hume called:

Gothic Versus Romantic: A Revaluation of The Gothic Novel

"The Gothic novel is defined not by its stock devices—ruined abbeys and the like—but by its use of a particular atmosphere for essentially psychological purposes. Mary Shelley, Maturin, Melville, and Faulkner develop a form crudely forged by Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, and M. G. Lewis. Their Gothic novels attempt to immerse the reader in an extraordinary world in which ordinary standards and moral judgments become meaningless and good and evil are seen as inextricably intertwined. Gothic writing is closely related to romantic: both are the product of a profound reaction against everyday reality and conventional religious explanations of existence. But while romantic writing is the product of faith in an ultimate order, Gothic writing is a gloomy exploration of the limitations of man. The one attempts to transcend the flux of the purely temporal to find joy and security in a higher beauty; the other is mired in the temporal and within it can find only absurdities and unresolvable ambiguities."