Course title: British Romanticism: poetry
(Former course title: English Romantic Poetry)
Instructor: Martina Domines Veliki, PhD
ECTS credits: 6
Language: English
Duration: 3rd or 5th, semester
Status: elective
Course type: 1 hour of lecture, 2 hours of seminar
Prerequisites: Introduction to English Literature or Introduction into English Lit 1 and 2
Course description: Authors we will read include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. Through reading of their representative poetry we will tackle some fundamental Romantic concepts such as poetic inspiration, memory of the past events, the sublime, deism and mysticism, the relationship between the poetic subject and nature as well as the role played by language. The poetic subject becomes the central topic of most Romantic poetry and it is actualized through a close relationship with nature that acts as either a consoling or a debilitating force. Priority will be given to the Romantic poets of the first generation. These poets often imagine themselves to be responding to the French Revolution. They rebel against social injustice, cherishing feelings for ‘common’ people. Their innovations at the level of subject matter but also of literary form were far-reaching to the point that we could speak about them as being the first ‘modern’ writers.
Objective: The students will be introduced to the major poets of English Romanticism, as well as their relevant historical, cultural, political and aesthetic milieu. The aim of this course is to encourage students to create their own view of the suggested array of poems through close reading. They will be asked to think about and analyze these poems with the help of a number of critical texts (from more traditional to post-structuralist ones).
Course requirements: continuous assessment (midterm and final exam, final paper, class attendance and participation).
Weekly schedule::
1. week. Introduction to English Romanticism. Periodization. Formative experiences for Romantic poetry
2. week. William Blake. Selections from Songs of Innocence and Experience
3. week. Blake continued – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
4. week. William Wordsworth, excerpts from the 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, a selection of poems from Lyrical Ballads
5. week. Wordsworth continued – a selection of poems from Poems in two Volumes
6. week. Wordsworth continued – The Prelude (chosen books)
7. week. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – selections from Biographia Literaria
8. week. Coleridge continued – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Dejection: an Ode
9. week. Mid-term exam
10. week. George Gordon Byron – excerpts from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
11. week. Byron continued – Prometheus, Fare Thee Well
12. week. Percy Bysshe Shelley – Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind
13. week. Shelley continued – To a Skylark, excerpts from A Defence of Poetry, Preface to Prometheus Unbound
14. week. John Keats – To Autumn, La Belle Dame Sans merci, Ode on a Grecian Urn
15. week. End-term exam
Reading list:
Primary literature:
– Bloom, Harold & Trilling, Lionel: Romantic Poetry and Prose (New York, London, Toronto : Oxford University Press , 1973) ili Wu, Duncan: A Companion to Romanticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001)
– Abrams, M. H.: The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (London: Oxford University Press, 1960)
– Bloom, Harold: The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry (London: Cornell University Press, any edition)
– Curran, Stuart (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
– Daiches, David: A Critical History of English Literature in four volumes (relevant chapters) (London : Secker & Warburg , 1992)
Secondary literature::
– Abrams, M. H.: Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1971)
– Bennett, Andrew: Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity (Cambridge UP, 1999)
– Brisman, Leslie: Romantic Origins (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978)
– Bromwich, David: Disowned by Memory: Wordsworth’s Poetry of the 1790s (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000)
– Butler, Marilyn: Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries – English Literature and its Background 1760-1830 (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1981)
– Day, Aidan: Romanticism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996)
– de Man, Paul: The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984)
– Erdman, David: Blake : Prophet against Empire (New York : Dover, 1991)
– Gill, Stephen: The Cambridge Companion to Wordsworth (Cambridge UP, 2003)
– Hartman, Geoffrey: Wordsworth’s Poetry 1787-1813 (Harvard UP, 1987)
– Mellor, Anne K.: Romanticism and Gender (Routledge, 1993)
– Roe, Nicholas. Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003)
– Reed, Arden: Romanticism and Language (Cornell University Press, 1984)
– Bone, Drummond: The Cambridge Companion to Byron (Cambridge UP, 2004)
– Morton, Timothy: The Cambridge Companion to Shelley (Cambridge UP, 2006)
– Newlyn, Lucy: The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge (Cambridge UP, 2002)
– Wolfson, Susan: The Cambridge Companion to Keats (Cambridge UP, 2001)