Romanticism Module, Spring 2004

Monday, January 19

First day: introductions and course outline.

• "The Romantics and Their Contemporaries" (anthology 2)
  • To see a sampling of recent critical work on Romanticism indexed by topic, you can look at the Romantic Circles Praxis series.

In class today, I will give a broad introduction to Romanticism and explain how the texts we will read fit into the big picture. I will leave time for questions about the reading, so prepare one or two of those in advance.

Also, please go to the class discussion board and write a solid paragraph or two introducing yourself to the class. Aside from the obvious introductory function of this assignment, it also ensures that we deal with any technical problems before the responses begin.

If you needed to complete the departmental assessment exercise, please bring that to class today.

• William Wordsworth, Preface (anthology 356), "The Thorn" (anthology 343), and "Note to the Thorn" (anthology 348) from Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (subscription only): Wordsworth as poet and prose writer

  • The Lyrical Ballads Bicentenary Project is an excellent scholarly site. A lot of Wordsworthian information of varying quality dots the Internet; the best and most authoritative starting point is probably the Wordsworth section of the Voice of the Shuttle Romanticism page.

  • There is a new electronic scholarly edition of Lyrical Ballads produced by Romantic Circles and Cambridge University Press. The project is on the cutting edge of digital textual scholarship.

Prepare a question or two for the post-lecture period of class discussion.

• Wordsworth, "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (352) and "Old Man Travelling" (351) from Lyrical Ballads (1798)

• Selections from M.H. Abrams, "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric" (1965) and Marjorie Levinson, "Insight and Oversight: Reading 'Tintern Abbey'" (1986, handout)
  • If you want or need to brush up on poetic form for the Wordsworth readings, see the ballad or blank verse sections of Connections

(Note: leave yourself a lot of time per page for the critical readings, especially Levinson.)

Linking Passage Exercise: Group I

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Eolian Harp" from Poems on Various Subjects (1796) and "Kubla Khan" (1798/1816)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (subscription only): Coleridge as poet and prose writer

  • The aforementioned Voice of the Shuttle Romanticism page also has a Coleriedge section, but you can also start with Marjorie A. Tiefert's Coleridge Archive.

Linking Passage Exercise: Group II

Here begins the Friday routine. Seminar A (Groups I, II, and III) meets in the classroom, and Group I submits responses individually by Thursday night. Seminar B meets in small groups, each of which will be led by member #1. All other members of Groups IV, V, and VI submit responses by Thursday night.

Note: the upcoming reading is uncommonly long. You might want to get a head start.

• Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, Marilyn Butler's Introduction and first part (1-84)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (subscription only): Edgeworth as novelist

Linking Passage Exercise: Group III

• Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, rest of the novel

Linking Passage Exercise: Group IV

Seminar B (Groups IV, V, and VI) meets in the classroom, and Group IV submits responses individually by Thursday night. Seminar A meets in small groups, each of which will be led by member #1. All other members of Groups I, II, and III submit responses by Thursday night. Note: the upcoming readings are uncommonly long. You might want to get a head start.

• George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Giaour (1813, in Three Oriental Tales)

• Marilyn Butler, "The Orientalism of Byron's Giaour" (in Three Oriental Tales)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (subscription only): Byron as poet

  • The Life and Work of Lord Byron on englishhistory.net provides good basic information. Aside from that site, there is remarkably little useful online material about Byron.

Linking Passage Exercise: Group V

PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE
FOR STUDENTS WRITING PAPERS

• Byron, Dedication (1819, anthology 668), Canto I (1819, anthology 672) and excerpt from Canto II (1819, anthology 717) of Don Juan

Linking Passage Exercise: Group VI

Seminar A (Groups I, II, and III) meets in the classroom, and Group II submits responses individually by Thursday night. Seminar B meets in small groups, each of which will be led by member #2. All other members of Groups IV, V, and VI submit responses by Thursday night.

• Percy Bysshe Shelley, from A Defence of Poetry (1821, anthology 800), "Ozymandias" (1818, anthology 760), and "Ode to the West Wind" (1819, anthology 771).
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (subscription only): Shelley as poet and prose writer

  • The Keats-Shelley House is a good starting point for finding the digital Shelley. None of the amateur sites online can capture Shelley as well as his own words in Stuart Curran's e-text of the notes to Queen Mab.

Linking Passage Exercise: Group I

• John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1816, anthology 854), with companion readings, and "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819, anthology 882)
  • The sonnet section of Connections

  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (subscription only): Keats as poet and prose writer

  • Unsurprisingly, the Keats-Shelley House is also a good starting point for finding the digital Keats. The Life and Work of John Keats has good general resources and some primary texts. You can see some cool manuscripts in this British Library exhibition.

Linking Passage Exercise: Group II

FIRST EXAM/PAPER DATE