Romanticism
Dr Wim Van Mierlo
Course description
What is Romanticism? The British Romantic poets did not constitute a movement or a school, yet in spite of differences between them literary history has recognized in the work of the poets working from ca. 1798 to 1850 a number of corresponding characteristics, affiliations and preoccupations. One may well speak of a Romantic mentalité . The object of this course is to study some of these preoccupations, of an aesthetic as well a political nature, such as Romantic moments or places, the sublime, intellectual beauty, visionary power, nationalism, revolution, and so on, against their historical and literary-historical context. Besides the canonical “six” (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byron), we will read a number works by “minor” figures and women poets from the period.
Reading List
Romanticism: An Anthology with CD-Rom. Ed. Duncan Wu. 2 nd Edition. Basingstoke: Blackwells, 2000. (ISBN 0631222693)
Syllabus
4 Oct. |
Romantic MomentsWilliam Wordsworth, “Daffodils” (383) Dorothy Wordsworth, from Grasmere Journals (433-35) William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper” (63), “Introduction” (71) , “The Sick Rose” (76), “The Tyger” (77) S.T. Coleridge, “Kubla Kahn” (522-4) Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” (859-61) John Keats, “Ode on Melancholy” 1062), "To Autumn" (1080)
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11 Oct. |
Romantic PlacesWilliam Blake, “London” (79) William Wordsworth, “Composed upon Westminster Bridge” (374), “London 1802” (374), “Tintern Abbey” (265-69) Dorothy Wordsworth, “A Cottage in Grasmere Vale” (435-36) James Leigh Hunt, “To Hampstead” (621)
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18 Oct. |
The Sublime and Intellectual Beauty IBurke, On the Sublime (4-8) Anna Laetitia Barbauld, ”A Summer's Evening Mediation” (19) Percy Bysche Shelley, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (841-43), “Mont Blanc”, from A Defence of Poetry (944-56) William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” (375-80); from Thirteen-Book Prelude (401-405) S.T. Coleridge, “Dejection: An Ode” (2 versions, 495-504; 507-11), “The Eolian Harp” (549-50), “Frost at Midnight” (462-65); from Biographia Litteraria (525-7); “Pains of Sleep” (524-5) Thomas de Quincey, from Confessions of an English Opium Eater (630-8)
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25 Oct. |
The Sublime and Intellectual Beauty IIsee above
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8 Nov. |
Romantic WomenCharlotte Smith (35-6) Charlotte Dacre (442-3) Mary Tighe (443-6) Felicia Dorothea Hemans (990-1004)
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15 Nov. |
Politics and RevolutionAnna Laetitia Barbauld, The Rights of Women (25-6) George Dyer, from The Complaints of the Poor People of England (45) Thomas Paine (14-7) Mary Wollstonecraft (140-5) William Godwin, from Political Justice (48-50) William Wordsworth, from The Thirteen-Book Prelude (394-9) |
22 Nov. |
The Lyrical Ballads I(189-269)
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29 Nov. |
The Lyrical Ballads II324-9, 332-56, 357-66) (see also Lyrical Ballads: Online Scholarly Edition
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6 Dec. |
John Keats Hyperion (1022-41)
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13 Dec. |
Percy Bysshe ShelleyAlastor (824-41); Prometheus Unbound (864-930)
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20 Dec. |
Lord Byronfrom Don Juan (755-6) Manfred (718-51) |
Pages created 29 September 2004, Wim Van Mierlo