ENGL 346: 19th Century English Romantic Literature

English Romanticism is the literary movement from ca. 1780 to 1830 famous for the revival of English poetry and landscape painting (Constable, Turner) as well as pamphlet wars and essayists (Burke, Paine). This is the turbulent age that gives birth to Mozart, Beethoven, and Napoleon, on the one hand, and the Gothic, Frankenstein, and melodrama on the other. We will cover major poets (Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Blake, Byron, and Coleridge) and important women writers (Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Elisabeth Inchbald). Our reading, which covers diverse genres such as poetry, prose, the novel, and drama, will be organized around the political, social, and economic revolutions of the era, from the French Revolution to proto-feminism and from the abolitionist movement to public riots. Course participants will leave with an appreciation for late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British literary culture and the untamable depths of the “Romantic” period.

Satisfies:
1b: pre-1900; 3: genre (fiction); 4c (women writers); 4e (class)

Approved course: English Teacher Education/other British literature

Course objectives:

-    Historical and Literary Epoch: Sophisticated understanding of what is romantic and revolutionary about Romanticism (1789-1830), including major political issues

-    Comparative Skills: To appreciate the use of literature as a dialogue (between male and female writers, opposing political factions, etc.)

-    Critical view of gender, class, and literary production around 1800

-    Ability to analyze and teach others about Romantic prose, poetry, and novel (with some appreciation for the development of the drama)

-    Scholastic Growth and Maturity (from Consumer to Producer of Knowledge)

Unit I: Romantic Revolutionaries – the Godwin circle (5.5 weeks)

Burke

Wollstonecraft

Blake

Inchbald

Abolitionist / slave narratives

Essay on what is revolutionary about the Romantics / politics around 1800

Unit II: Romantic poetry (5.5 weeks)

Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads and part of Prelude

Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Women Writers

PBS, England in 1819

Byron

Keats

Short essay on a poem > revise into a brief essay

Unit III: Frankenstein (2.5 weeks)--Culminating in final about Frankenstein, women writers, and Romanticism

Learning goals:

What is the nature of the reading audience around 1800?

What political issues and human truths lie beyond the Romantic vision?

Interview Your Neighbor(s) and Report:

• Name

• Major

• Favorite book you read last year

Review of L. 1:

What is romantic about Declaration of Rights (1789)/Independence (1776)? – Romantic values ~

•    Visionary (free citizens)

•    impractical (happiness)

•    universalism

•    irony: exclusion of women and people of color from rights

Review of L. 4-5:

Paine’s The Rights of Man

-    Why is Paine’s text censored whereas Wollstonecraft’s is not?

-    Female vs. male authorship; Paine and the language of the “common” man; attack on Burke’s rhetoric vs. attack on all monarchies

“Jacobinism:”

Ascribing to the Rights of Man, but also a political slur in Britain 

Range of issues that Burke, Wollstonecraft, Paine, and Godwin re-examine in light of the Rights of Man:

-    Do we subscribe to the divine rights of kings or a universal, inclusive equality (monarchy vs. democracy / republicanism)?

-    Consequences for the traditional ordering of the world: property, taxes, speech, religion, gender relations, abolitionism, law, and government

Essay 2: Romantic Poetry

>> Pre-writing serves the function of helping you to define your topic; to practice writing about poetry; and to gain feedback from other students and the instructor well before the final essay is due.

Poetry: Major component of the English GRE, teaching of English in the classroom

REFERENCE (1st Floor)

-    Literary and Thematic Terms (PN 44.5 . Q56 1999)

-    Literary Movements for Students (PN 597 .L58 2002 v. 1)

-    Dictionary of Literary Biography (CT 8620 .D5; vol. 93 = British Romantic Poets)

-    Masterplots (PN 1110.5 .M37 2002)

-    The Oxford Companion to English Literature                                                                                                                                                                   (PR 19. 094 2000)

-    Literature and its Times (PN 50 .L574)

-    Poetry for Students (PN 1101. P756)

-    Poetry Criticism (PN 1010 .P6); use index (separate)

InfoTrac contains more literary articles

Romantic Irony (Fetzer):

•    irony = figure of speech; intended meaning is opposite of that expressed by words used; not coincidence see also: sarcasm, satire

•    romantic irony = the dual view; syncretism; bifocal vision (21); one reality is not given hierarchy over the other, but rather two views are offered

•    idealism and apocalyptic vision; eternity and forgetfulness

Wordsworth’s Prelude (Books I and X)

-    Example of epic voice (p. 393, l. 175) and lyrical mode (p. 394, l. 220)

-    The role of nighttime in experiencing nature (Boat scene, l. 370 in Book I)

-    Celebration of nature (see Susan and Alana’s essays)

-    Book I = Meditation on childhood (Audra)

-    What view of the poet does Wordsworth construct? (Faith)

Interpretive Questions (3/28):

Mary Robinson, “The Haunted Beach” (221); Mary Shelley (462); Dorothy Wordsworth, “Grasmere—a Fragment” (467) and Grasmere Journals (478)

1.    How does “The Haunted Beach” compare to Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (528)?

2.    How does “The Haunted Beach” compare to Mary Shelley’s lament about her husband Percy Shelley’s death?

3.    What romantic qualities do Dorothy Wordsworth’s writings embody?

P. B. Shelley's "Mont Blanc" and "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"

1. What is the symbolism of the setting among ice and mountains in “Mont Blanc”?

2. How does the “secret chasm” and river in “Mont Blanc” compare to those in “Kubla Khan”? (757/ l. 123)

3. “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” >> Rephrase questions posed in stanza 2 in your own words. What is the lyrical voice asking in this apostrophe?

4. If "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" is an argument for atheism, what ‘reasons’ does Shelley give for being an atheist?

Review of L. 23

Byron: irony, satire, modern celebrity

The "Byronic Hero" (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Manfred, Don Juan) See also NASSR Archives:

- Ellen Moody

- Atara Stein

- Peter Thorslev, The Byronic Hero: Types and Protoypes

Optional Revision of Essay II: Romantic Poetry

-    Quick turnaround: opportunity to give students REVISION OPTION

-    21 April 2005 (Thursday): no papers excepted beyond that—final deal

-    only papers below 90 points

-    original must be included

-    Because: many worked very hard on these papers and are on the brink of saying something, but are having difficult expressing themselves

Review of L. 24-25

I. Question to think about for final exam:

>> What romantic values does Frankenstein embody? In what ways might Frankenstein be read as a critique of Romanticism and its well-known (male) proponents (Godwin, Wordsworth, Keats, P. B. Shelley, Byron, etc.)?

•    nature vs. civilization

•    the danger of ego

II. Discussion about Vol. I of Frankenstein:

•    Double-ness of characters (Walton/Frankenstein; Frankenstein/monster; Elizabeth/Frankenstein; Justine/mother) and narrative style (frame, point of view)

•    Creation of the monster as birth in reverse

•    Crime, punishment, and Frankenstein’s “guilt”

>> Is a parent responsible for violence caused by a (neglected) child?