English 338: Studies in the Romantic Movement
NOTE: After our first meeting on Jan. 14 this class will meet in Ferguson Lab, Sullivan Center
Schedule of readings and assignments
[the black board]
January 14: introduction/demo.
January 16: Helen Maria Williams, from Poems (1786)
January 21: Williams continued; William Wordsworth, "Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep . . . " (1787)
January 23 (no class: download & read!)
January 28: [assignment #1 due]; Joanna Baillie, "Night Scenes" (1790)
January 30: William Blake, The Book of Thel (1789-90)
February 4: anon., "The Sorrows of Yamba" (1795); compare various links in Romantic Chronology
February 6: Anna Laetitia Barbauld, "Epistle to William Wilberforce" (1791)
February 11: Mary Robinson, fm. Sappho and Phaon (1796)
February 13: Richard Polwhele, "the Unsex'd Females"; Dictionary of Sensibility; WORP project
February 18: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Aeolian Harp"; William Wordsworth, "Lines Written in Early Spring," "We Are Seven"
February 20: Wordsworth, Advertisement and Prefaces to Lyrical Ballads (1798, 1802 etc.)
February 25: Wordsworth, "The Thorn," "Strange fits of passion," "She dwelt among the untrodden ways," "Three years she grew," "A slumber did my spirit seal"
February 27: Coleridge, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798), "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (illustrated 1889 edn.), "Kubla Khan" (Crewe MSS) Kubla Khan" (printed version)
Spring Break
March 11: Lord Byron, "She walks in beauty," vampire fragment, "Darkness," "Prometheus"; [compare:] John Polidori, "The Vampyre"
March 13: Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Devil's Walk," "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," "Ode to the West Wind"
March 18: Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey," Shelley, "England in 1819"; G. Cruikshank, Victory of Peterloo
March 20: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, Resources for the study of Frankenstein
March 25: Frankenstein cont'd; w/ web resources
March 27:The Romantic Circles Website
April 1: John Keats, "Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil", "La Belle Dame sans Merci"
April 3: Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale", British Museum page (with audio clip)
April 8: Mary Shelley, "The Mourner"
April 10: No class
April 15: Byron, "On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year"; note on Greek War of Independence; Mary W. Shelley, The Last Man (esp. chptrs: I.1-3; II.1-3; III.1; III.10)
April 17: The Last Man continued
April 22: The Last Man continued
April 24 (final class): [assignment #2 due]; Felicia Hemans, fm. Records of Woman, "Homes of England," "To Wordsworth"
Classroom presentations:
2 ten-minute introductions to the day's material, focused on a vivid detail from one of the day's texts, and based on limited outside research by you (I can help with suggestions for this). We'll sign up for these in the first two weeks of class.
Written assignments:
#1. DUE JAN. 28: a 2-3 page essay on "pain" and "pleasure" in two or three poems by Wordsworth and Williams.
#2. DUE APRIL 24: 10-12 page essay making an unexpected comparison of two key passages (two lines or sentences, or two paragraphs or stanzas, for example) from two works on the syllabus above.