Fall, 1998

T,Th, 3-4:15

David Young

TEXTS:

Duncan Wu, Romanticism, An Anthology (Blackwell)

Jane Austen, Persuasion (Penguin)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Signet)

ORGANIZATION AND RATIONALE:

The material we will be reading in this course belongs to a fascinating period, one that still shapes our assumptions and governs our attitudes in ways we don't always fully understand. In politics, in the arts, in the world of learning, and in the ongoing human development for which we useterms like "culture" and "civilization," this was a crucial period of change, growing out of extraordinary developments and the widespread challenging of old assumptions, and leading to the formation of values and beliefs that still prevail. When people speak of "the romantic watershed," in other words, they aren't exaggerating. It provides a perspective from which to see and understand a lot that happened before, has happened since, and is still happening.

We can't possibly do justice to this entire period, in all these respects. But we would ignore it, while reading the poets and novelists this course takes up, at our peril. I will keep touching on the larger context as we go along, but I would like you to take some responsibility for that as well. I'd like you to keep a "Romanticism Journal," in which you record not only your responses to our reading but also your sense of their relation to that larger context, and your encounters with that context, past and present. From time to time, I'll ask to see your journal, so we can discuss its progress, and I'll read it in its entirety at the close of the semester. It will be your record of what you studied, how you felt about it, and how you see it in the historical and cultural context to which it belongs.

In addition to the journal, I'll ask you to write two papers, drawing on materials from each half of the course. The first of these can be handed in just before or just after Fall Break (your choice), the second is due by the end of Reading Period (Dec. 17). These papers will be 6-8 pages in length, on a topic of your own choosing.

You'll discover very early on that there's a "canon" of great romantic texts, one that involves the six poets we'll read, along with the two novelists. It's a canon formed over the course of the past two centuries,basically, and it has been much challenged and criticized over the past twenty-five years or so. While feeling that this "canon" makes a lot of sense and represents the com-posite response of a great many readers (none of them fully disinterested, of course, but quite diverse in their views, beliefs, assumptions, and prejudices), I am also quite comfortable with the questioning that has occurred and that continues. I think it's healthy and necessary. It is one of my reasons for choosing our anthology, which dips widely into the non-canonical texts, making them readily available to you and allowing me to assign some of them along the way. And I will regard it as part of your responsibility to understand the questionings and the reasons for them, and to emerge from the course with a full sense both of the canon's extent and formation, and with your own 'take' on its acceptability and the questions about it. Thus you need to feel responsible for acquainting yourself with recent and current perspectives on these poems and novels, and you need to feel free to formulate your own opinions and responses. Insofar as your journals, papers, and discussion comments show me you are attending to this responsibility and enjoying this freedom, I will be likely to feel quite positive in my evaluation of your work for the course. It's not hat you must become a feminist or a new historicist or a deconstructionist, etc., but rather that you should feel acquainted with these perspectives, comfortable discussing them, and able to discern what kinds of contributions they have made to the ongoing discussion about romantic literature and canon formation.

Close reading of sometimes difficult poetry is a skill that you may already possess to some extent, but I can't assume that. Much of our class discussion, therefore, will be devoted to the subtleties and intricacies of famous poems by the English romantic poets. I want you to emerge from this class as confident and sensitive readers of poetry, and I know from experience that that skill builds itself on group discussion in which everyone is willing to contribute, listen and react thoughtfully to what is being said. Coming to class with each assignment carefully read, ready to contribute to such a discussion, is your continuous responsibility, and you can expect that I may call on you at any point to respond to detailed questions about the reading and to contribute your own views to issues that the texts we are reading raise. If you don't think you can handle this regular responsibility, you don't want to be in this class.

SCHEDULE OF DISCUSSION TOPICS AND READING ASSIGNMENTS:

Thurs, Sept. 5: Introductory.

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Tues. Sept. 8: What Is Romanticism? Use the handout and further readings in the first group of reserve books to formulate the beginnings of a definition. Come prepared to contribute to a composite portrait of the movement.

 

Thurs. Sept. 10: What is Romantic Art? Bring one instance of a previous encounter that involved you with the experience of romantic art. You can select from music (a CD and tape player will be available), from the visual arts (bring, if possible, an illustration). Literary works are fine too, but try to avoid texts we'll be studying this semester. Remember that American romantic art is permissible here too.

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Tues. Sept. 15: William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Wu, 60-84). Read the entire text. Pick two poems from each cycle for closer study and come prepared to present them for class discussion.

 

Thurs. Sept. 17: William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Wu, 84- 94). Do a little research into one of the following topics: Blake's visual art; the tradition of religious dissent; repression and its relation to psychology and politics.

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Tues. Sept. 22: The Coleridge-Wordsworth partnership, and Lyrical Ballads.

Read the text of Lyrical Ballads in Wu, 191-269. Given the length of the collection, you will obviously need to browse. Poems especially worthy of attention (excluding the first and last, which we'll look at in detail on Thursday) include "The Nightingale," "Lines Written at a Small Distance from My House," "We Are Seven," and "Lines Written in Early Spring." Compare the language of the poems with the language in Charlotte Smith, pp. 35-36, and Ann Batten Cristall, e.g. 180, 184. Con- sider the claims of the Advertisement (the expanded version, 357- 363, should be consulted if you haven't read it before) and the ways in which the text fulfills them. Read Southey's review, 564.

 

Thurs. Sept. 24: Lyrical Ballads. Particular attention to the opening and closing poems, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (and see 545) and "Lines Written A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey . . "

Journals due.

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Tues. Sept. 29: S. T. Coleridge, "The Aeolian Harp," 451 (where it is known as "Effusion XXXV," and see note for later versions); "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," 458, and see note for later versions; "Kubla Khan," 461-2 and see also 522-4; "Dejection: An Ode," 507-511 (see also 495ff. and 544ff).

 

Thurs. Oct. 1: Dorothy Wordsworth, 431-440, especially the journal entries.

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Tues. Oct. 6: William Wordsworth, Part I of The Two-Part Prelude. 300-311; the "Lucy"poems, 326-329.

 

Thurs. Oct. 8: Wordworth, "Resolution and Independence," 368-372; the seven sonnets on 372-75; "Ode" (the "Intimations Ode"), 375-380.

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Tues. Oct. 13: William Wordsworth, "Daffodils," 383; "Stepping Westward," 384; "The Solitary Reaper," 384-5; "Crossing the Alps" from The Prelude, 389-392.

 

Thurs. Oct. 15: Wordsworth, "The Climbing of Snowdon," from The Prelude, 401-405; "Surprised by Joy," 405.

Paper due date (see also Oct. 27)

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FALL BREAK

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Tues. Oct. 27: George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Stanzas," 666-8; "She Walks in Beauty," 668; "Prometheus," 708-9; "Darkness," 716-17.

Alternative paper due date.

 

Thurs. Oct. 29: Byron, from Don Juan, Dedication and Canto I, 752-785.

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Tues. Nov. 3: P. B. Shelley, "Mont Blanc," 843-49; "Ozymandias," 849; "Ode to the West Wind," 859-61.

 

Thurs. Nov. 5: P. B. Shelley, "England in 1819," 940; "To A Skylark," 941-43; "Adonais," 956-75.

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Tues. Nov. 10: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapters 1-14.

 

Thurs. Nov. 12: Frankenstein, Chapters 15-24.

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Tues. Nov. 17: Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapters 1-12.

 

Thurs. Nov. 19: Persuasion, Chapters 13-24.

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Tues. Nov. 24: John Clare, "June," 976-77; "To the Snipe," 977-79; "The Badger," 985-86; "I am," 987.

Journals due.

 

Thanksgiving

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Tues. Dec. 1: John Keats, poems and letters in Wu, 1012-1022.

 

Thurs. Dec. 3: Keats, "Eve of St. Agnes," 1043-53; "La Belle Dame. ." 1054-56;

"Ode to Psyche," 1056-58.

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Tues. Dec. 8: Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale," 1058-1060. "Ode on a Grecian Urn," 1060-61.

 

Thurs. Dec. 10: Keats, "To Autumn," 1080; "The Fall of Hyperion," 1081-92; "Bright Star," 1092.

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2nd paper and journal due Dec. 17

 

RESERVE BOOKS:

'ENGLISH LITERATURE & THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT'

 

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

Beer, John, ed., Questioning Romanticism

Chase, Cynthia, ed., Romanticism

Curran, Stuart, ed., The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism

Day, Aidan, Romanticism

McGann, Jerome, The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation

Wu, Duncan, Romanticism: A Critical Reader

 

Erdman, David V., The Illustrated Blake

Frye, Northrop, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake

Thompson, E.P., Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law

 

Bate, Jonathan, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition

Hartman, Geoffrey, Wordsworth's Poetry, 1787-1814

Jacobus, Mary, Tradition and Experiment in Lyrical Ballads

Levin, Susan, Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism

Orr, Leonard, ed., Critical Essays on Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Roe, Nicholas, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years

Stillinger, Jack, Coleridge and Textual Instability

 

McGann, Jerome, Don Juan in Context

Rutherford, Andrew, Byron: A Critical Study

 

Chernaik, Judith, The Lyrics of Shelley

Gelpi, Barbara C., Shelley's Goddess

O'Neill, Michael, The Human Mind's Imaginings: Conflict and Achievement in Shelley's Poetry

 

Levine & Knoepflmacher, The Endurance of Frankenstein

Smith, Johanna, Frankenstein: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism

 

Bush, Douglas, Jane Austen

Harding, D.W., Regulated Hatred

Morgan, Susan, In the Meantime: Character and Perception in Jane Austen's Fiction

Williams, Michael, Jane Austen

 

Brownlow, Timothy, John Clare and Picturesque Landscape

Storey, Mark, The Poetry of John Clare

 

Jack, Ian, Keats and the Mirror of Art

Ricks, Christopher, Keats and Embarrassment

Roe, Nicholas, Keats and the Culture of Dissent

Vendler, Helen, The Odes of John Keats