English 422/522--The Romantic Century

Harriet Kramer Linkin (117 English Building)

Abstract

Course Description and Objectives: Romanticism was a literary age marked by a series of revolutions: the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft's "revolution in female manners," and revolutionary efforts to redefine self, identity, consciousness, and visionary experience. The latest revolution in Romanticism has been an explosive rediscovery of more Romantic literature: ten years this course would have focused on six of the greatest male poets ever to write in the English language (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats), but now we can also read the work of great women poets (Barbauld, Smith, Robinson, Tighe, Hemans, Landon), and look beyond poetry to consider how prose writers voice the Romantic. Because the parameters of Romanticism have changed, critics have renamed the period a Romantic Century that includes several literary movements, such as the pre-Romanticism of eighteenth century poets of sensibility, Gothic fiction, the canonical writings of the male poets, the rediscovered poetry of Romantic women writers, the political poetry and prose of British abolitionists, the early Victorian poetesses and more. We will look at a reasonable sampling of some of these movements as we read and discuss wonderful literature and challenging ideas.

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