Emmanuel Acosta – Final Paper HUM 211 3/5/2016 Impact of the Industrial Revolution on the Humanities Humanities is described as the study of how people as a whole, process and record human life. From the wall paintings of the Stone Age, to Plato’s “The Republic”, to the exhilarating tranquility of the sound of jazz, humans have used philosophy, literature, storytelling, and art to express ourselves. The term “the humanities” is a term that molds its definition with the movement of time and the progression or regression of humans. The 18th century brought unprecedented change throughout the world. The colonies declared independence while creating arguably, some of the world’s greatest literary documents, the Declaration of Independence and One of the powerful forms of writing took full form during the industrial revolution ; Romanticism. Romanticism in English literature began in the late 18th century with the publication of Lyrical Ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. During this era poetry was known as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. The Industrial Revolution was the biggest economic influence on the 19th century. With the rise of factories prompted more and more people to migrate from the countryside to large cities to work in these factories. This move created a human detachment from nature. People left their simple lives of working on farms and hunting, to that of a fast paced, hectic hard manual labor filled life. Romantics did not appreciate this change in lifestyle. They believed that the industrial revolution brought sadness upon the people. Lyrical Ballads is a great example of authors of this period expressed their emotions towards the Industrial revolution through a series of poems. A recurring theme in Lyrical Ballads is one which envisions factory workers reconnecting with the natural world. One of the poems in lyrical ballads is “Lines Witten in Early Spring”. Here are some lines to that