Course title: British Romanticism: prose
Instructor: Martina Domines Veliki, PhD
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 4th or 6th, 8th or 10th semester
in ac. year 2017/18: 4th or 6th semester
Status: elective
Course type: 1 hour of lecture, 2 hours of seminar
Enrollment requirements: enrollment in the 4th or 6th, 8th or 10th semester
Prerequisites: Introduction to English Literature
Course description: This module aims to engage students at a high level of scholarly rigour with the key themes, ideas and concerns of British Romanticism and with the wider historical, cultural and political contexts out of which they emerged. We will depart from the socio-historical contexts (Scottish Enlightenment, French Revolution, women rights) and a selection of texts which were central for the lively public debates of the period. We will then continue with the representative prose texts covering the gothic novel, the Scottish historical novel and Romantic confessional writing. Primary readings will be balanced with critical essays.
Course requirements: continuous assessment (midterm and final exam, final paper, class attendance and participation).
Weekly schedule:
Week 1: socio-historical context, from the Scottish Enlightenment to English Romanticism, excerpts from Edmund Burke: Reflections on the French Revolution, Thomas Paine: Rights of Man, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Week 2: historical novel, Scottish national identity
Week 3: Sir Walter Scott (1814) Waverley
Week 4: Waverley
Week 5: autobiography, Romantic confessional narratives (from St. Augustine to Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
Week 6: James Hogg (1824) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Week 7: Thomas de Quincey (1821) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Week 8: Mid-term exam
Week 9: gothic novel-genre development
Week 10: Horace Walpole (1764) The Castle of Otranto
Week 11: Jane Austen (1817) Northanger Abbey
Week 12: <Northanger Abbey some scenes from the movie Northanger Abbey directed by Jon Jones (2007)
Week 13: Mary Shelley (1818) Frankenstein
Week 14: Frankensteincont. with some scenes from the movie Frankenstein (2004) directed by Kenneth Branagh
Week 15: End-term exam, seminar paper
Reading list:
Primary literature :
Sir Walter Scott (1814) Waverley
James Hogg (1824) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Thomas de Quincey (1821) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Horace Walpole (1764), The Castle of Otranto
Jane Austen (1817) Northanger Abbey
Mary Shelley (1818) Frankenstein
Secondary literature:
Anderson, Linda. Autobiography (New York & London: Routlege, 2001)
Broadie, Alexander (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge UP, 2003)
Burwick, Frederick. Thomas de Quincey: Knowledge and Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001)
Chandler, James. The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature (Cambridge UP, 2008)
Clery, E. J. Women’s Gothic: from Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. (Tavistock, 2004)
Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (Cambridge UP, 1997)
Crawford, Robert (ed.). The Scottish Invention of English Literature (Cambridge UP, 1998)
Daiches, David. The Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh and Aberdeen: The Saltire Society, 1986)
De Bolla, Peter, Nigel Leask, David Simpson. Land, Nation, Culture: 1740-1840 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
De Groot, Jerome. The Historical Novel (London, New York: Routledge, 2010)
Duncan, Ian. Scott’s Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007)
Duncan, Ian and Douglas S. Mack (ed.) The Edinburgh Companion to James Hogg (Edinburgh UP, 2012)
Levi, Susan M. The Romantic Art of Confession (New York and Woodbridge: Camden House1998)
Lukács Georg. The Historical Novel (London: Merlin Press, 1962)
McCalman, Ian. An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832 (Oxford UP, 1999)
Moretti, Franco. Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900 (London and New York: Verso, 1998)
Moretti, Franco. Signs Taken for Wonders (London and New York, 1983)
Olney, James. Memory and Narrative: the weave of life-writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)
Punter, David (ed.) A Companion to the Gothic (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2008)
Robertson, Fiona (ed.). Edinburgh Companion to Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh UP, 2012)
Smith, Joanna M. (ed.) Frankenstein: complete authoritative text with biographical and historical contexts, critical history and essays from five contemporary critical perspectives. (Boston: Bedford Books of St Martin’s Press, 1992)
Smith, Sidonie, Julia Watson (eds.) Women, Autobiography, Theory: a Reader (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998)
Townshend, Dale. The Orders of Gothic: Foucault, Lacan and the subject of Gothic writing, 1764 – 1820 (New York: AMS Press, 2007)
Wu, Duncan (ed.). A Companion to Romanticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)
