ENGH 334: British Poetry of the Romantic Period

ENGH 334-001: British Poetry Romantic Period
(Fall 2011)

01:30 PM to 02:45 PM TR

Section Information for Fall 2011

Though the Romantic era in England is usually defined as running from roughly 1780 to 1830, the cultural developments of the period were of such significance and influence that many argue we are still living in a "Romantic age."  Amid revolutions abroad, social unrest at home, massive technological and economic shifts, and new ideas about the nature of the self and about the rights of individual men and women, the writers we'll study in this course saw the world changing with an unprecedented pace, and felt alternately exhilarated, terrified, enraged and amused by the changes they witnessed.  We'll look at how Romantic writers used experiments with literary form both to respond to these social and historical contexts, and to address more intimate concerns of love and loss, memory and desire.  We will read some of the most provocative, most lasting, and most exciting poetry of the period, as well as at least one novel--Mary Shelley's Frankenstein--in direct dialogue with this poetry (the novel began in a ghost-story-writing contest with two leading poets, the rock-star-like Lord Byron and Mary's husband Percy).  Poets studied include the "Big Six" standard to Romanticism courses--Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Percy, Shelley, Byron and Keats--but also some less frequently studied figures such as John Clare, Felicia Hemans and Letitia Landon, whose work, compelling on its own, fascinatingly modifies and complicates our understanding of those "Big Six."  Topics include gender and sexuality; the natural world and the new metropolis; domestic life in wartime; the social role and responsibility of the writer; the poet as celebrity; childhood, imagination and dream.

Course Information from the University Catalog