Dark Romanticism involves sin, self-destruction, and often Supernatural forces.

G.R. Thompson describes the movement as follows:

"Fallen man’s inability fully to comprehend haunting reminders of another, Supernatural realm that yet seemed not to exist, the constant perplexity of inexplicable and vastly metaphysical phenomena, a propensity for seemingly perverse hoặc evil moral choices that had no firm hoặc fixed measure hoặc rule, and a sense of nameless guilt combined with a suspicion the external world was a delusive projection of the mind—these were major elements in the vision of man the Dark Romantics opposed to the mainstream of Romantic thought."