Ph.D. Field Exam -- Romantic Theory
Jesse Cohn/Frederick Garber
 

Organizing theme: Romantic theories of language -- particularly theories of its origin, nature, and significance for thought and metaphysics.
35 texts.

 

Primary Sources

 

  • Blake, William. Selected texts (including "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", "The Book of Urizen", Marginalia).

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  • Byron, George Gordon. Don Juan.

     

  • Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Litteraria.

     

  • --The Statesman's Manual.

     

  • --selected poetry (including "The Eolian Harp", "Frost at Midnight", "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", and "This Lime-Tree-Bower My Prison")

     

  • Godwin, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

     

  • --The Enquirer.

     

  • Goethe, Johan. Maxims and Reflections.

     

  • Herder, Johan. Essay on the Origin of Language.

     

  • Keats, John. Hyperion.

     

  • --Fall of Hyperion.

     

  • --Selected texts ("Ode to Psyche", "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a

     

  • Grecian Urn", "Ode on Melancholy", "To Autumn").

     

  • --Letters.

     

  • Schlegel, Friedrich. Athenaeum Fragments.

     

  • --Critical Fragments.

     

  • Schlegel, August Wilhelm. Course in Dramatic Literature.

     

  • Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Defence of Poetry.

     

  • --Prometheus Unbound.

     

  • --Selected texts ("Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", "Mont Blanc", "Mutability", "Ode to the West Wind", "On Life", "To a Sky-Lark").

     

  • --The Triumph of Life.

     

  • Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Essay on the Origin of Languages.

     

  • Vico, Giambattista. The New Science of Giambattista Vico.

     

  • Wordsworth, William. The Prelude.

     

  • --selected texts ("Expostulation and Reply", "I Wander Lonely as as Cloud", "Lines Written in Early Spring", "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", "Preface to Lyrical Ballads", "The Tables Turned", "Tintern Abbey").

     

    Secondary Sources

     

  • Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp.

     

  • Blakemore, Steven. Burke and the Fall of Language: The French Revolution as a Linguistic Event.

     

  • Corrigan, Timothy. Coleridge, Language, and Criticism.

     

  • Danesi, Marcel. Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin of Language.

     

  • De Man, Paul. "The Rhetoric of Temporality".

     

  • Garber, Frederick, editor. Romantic Irony.

     

  • Heidegger, Martin. Selected texts ("Holderlin and the Essence of Poetry", "Remembrance of the Poet.")

     

  • Marshall, Peter. William Godwin.

     

  • Walzel, Oskar. German Romanticism.

     

  • Wellek, Rene. A History of Modern Criticism, vol. 1.

     

  • --A History of Modern Criticism, vol. 2.