English 217 - "Placing" Romanticism

"Placing" Romanticism will mean working to incorporate its subject matter into your literary and cultural vocabulary. The best way to learn about literature is to write about it. Hence, this class will be organized around our writing and thinking, and will develop with our classroom discussions.

THE WAYS WE'LL DO THIS:

Over the course of the semester, you will assemble a PORTFOLIO which will be assessed at term's end and will consist of the following:

    Keynote: Seasonable Months, Warming Skies

    I grew up in Manchester, the venue for this year’s International Conference on Romanticism. Manchester is famous for its weather – not like California or the South of France are famous for their weather: no, Mancunian weather is grey and wet. And there is a distinctive quality to Mancunian wetness. I remember childhood days on which, even when it wasn’t raining, it was still, somehow, moist, Atlantic rain clouds trapped up against the buffer of the Pennines to the east dispersing a kind of inverse miasma from above.