Romanticism was an artistic movement that validated the experience of intense emotion, with a particular emphasis on nature and the sublime. (Examining excerpts from The Sublime and The Beautiful, a work by Edmund Burke, one can define the sublime as excitement, pain, fear, horror or terror). Artists in the Romantic movement were required to encourage or help the reader to experience and feel all emotions. Goethe and Edgar Allen Poe achieve this successfully by using romantic elements to evoke or arouse intense emotions. Edgar Allen's Poe story "The Black Cat" is a macabre tale that uses the sublime to evoke the emotions of horror and fear in readers. The narrator gives gruesome details of how he murders his wife. He said: “I pulled my arm out of his grip and drove the ax into his brain. She lay dead on the spot without a moan” (Poe 228). The narrator explains that he was overcome with rage. The murder of his wife was an expression of rage, and by acting on these emotions, the narrator expresses perversity. The narrator states that perversity “is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary faculties, or feelings, which give direction to the character of man” (Poe 225). This notion of perversity that the narrator speaks of is an irrational human tendency. This suggests that human action is deeply rooted in the heart, the focal point of deep feelings and emotions. This idea is romantic because it suggests that human actions are an impulse of the heart and cannot be controlled. Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther is a novel that captures Werther's misery. Goethe uses themes such as happiness, nature and suicide within the framework of romanticism. As for time... middle of paper ...... character and artist who loves passionately and feels deeply. Goethe uses elements of nature in his work to better illustrate this flow of emotion, while Poe uses subliminal elements to convey a sense of horror and terror in his work. After reading The Sorrows of Young Werther, the reader feels sad for Werther and recalls a time when a love was lost; After reading “The Black Cat,” one feels a sense of terror at the idea that a man would be crazy enough to murder his wife. Despite the overall differences, what makes these works romantic is their ability to evoke intense emotions in the reader. Works Cited Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von and William Rose. The sorrows of young Werther. London: Scholartis, 1929. Print. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Black Cat.” The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Vintage, 1975. 223-30. Print.