Syllabus for English 327: The Romantics
Literature of Excess: Gothicism and Romanticism
Spring 2011

• Jerrold E. Hogle, introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction

• Michael Gamer, "Gothic Fictions and Romantic Writing in Britain" from The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction

First day: introductions and course outline

Note: here and throughout this syllabus, the first (less indented) list of readings is required, while the second (more indented) list of readings is supplemental and optional. Here, for example, the novel is a required reading, while the three readings in the following, more indented bullet points are recommended for exploration but are not required.

• Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
  • Michael Gamer, introduction to the Penguin edition

  • Robert Harris, Notes for The Castle of Otranto

  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Walpole as novelist

Assignment for everyone: go to the course blog and post a brief self-introduction. This will help us get to know each other and also confirm that everyone can post on the blog.

Group 1 special interest (or wild card) blog post: Point us to a specific place in the text (from 1-10 lines) that you want us to discuss further in class because it raises an issue or problem in the novel as a whole. Use your blog post to explain your choice.

• Excerpts from M. G. Lewis, The Monk (1796)

• Ann Radcliffe, The Italian (1797), 1-83
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Radcliffe as novelist

Group 2 special interest (or wild card) blog post: Point us to a specific place in the text (from 1-10 lines) that you want us to discuss further in class because it raises an issue or problem in the readings as a whole.

• Radcliffe, The Italian, 84-192

Group 3 special interest (or wild card) blog post: Point us to a specific place in the text (from 1-10 lines) that you want us to discuss further in class because it raises an issue or problem in the readings as a whole.

• Eve Sedgwick, "The Character in the Veil: Imagery of the Surface in the Gothic Novel"

• Radcliffe, The Italian, 193-336

Group 1 blog post: As usual, you may use this blog post to develop your special interest or as a wild card blog post. Write your blog post as a discussion of some specific issue that arises from the readings. This assignment is what I mean by "open prompt" assignments in the rest of the syllabus.

• Radcliffe, The Italian, 337-478

Group 2 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Sections on Thomas Percy (pp. 17-22), Walter Scott (as editor--pp. 23-26), and Robert Blair (pp. 29-30), The Longman Anthology of Gothic Verse

• William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, selections from the 1798 Lyrical Ballads: Advertisement (p. 47 of the Gamer/Porter edition), "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" (49), "Goody Blake and Harry Gill, A True Story" (89), and "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey . . ." (142)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Wordsworth as poet and prose writer

  • 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.

Group 3 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Wordsworth, 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads (Gamer/Porter 171)

• Michael Gamer, "'Gross and violent stimulants': Producing Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800"

Group 1 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Wordsworth, "The Thorn" (1798, Gamer/Porter 103)

• Signmund Freud, "The Uncanny" (1919)

Group 2 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Wordsworth, "Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman" (1798, Gamer/Porter 95)

• Maureen McLane, "British Romantic Mediality and Beyond: Reflections on the Fate of 'Orality'"

Group 3 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel (1816)

• Coleridge, reviews of Gothic literature
  • Coleridge's Gothic Readings, by Douglass H. Thomson
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Coleridge as poet and prose writer

Group 1 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• John Keats, The Eve of St. Agnes (1820) and "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (1820)

• Martin Aske, "Magical Spaces in The Eve of St. Agnes"
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Keats as poet and prose writer

  • The Keats-Shelley House is a good starting point for finding the digital Keats. The Life and Work of John Keats has good general resources and some primary texts.

Group 2 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria; Or, the Wrongs of Woman
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Wollstonecraft as novelist and prose writer

  • The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Wollstonecraft
  • The scholar Janet Todd writing for the BBC on Wollstonecraft

Group 3 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Mary Shelley, Matilda (written 1819-1820, published 1959)

• Mary Jean Corbett, Introduction to Family Likeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Shelley as novelist

Group 1 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cenci (1819)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell 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.

Group 2 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

NO CLASS TODAY:
INDIVIDUAL MIDSEM CONFERENCES

• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Volume I
  • Robert Harrison's Entitled Opinions podcast episode with Denise Gigante on Romanticism and organic form (with commentary on Frankenstein)

  • For an excellent talk about the current analogs to Frankenstein's science (with an explicit Frankenstein reference near the end), see this TED Talk by Paul Root Wolpe

Group 3 special interest (or wild card) blog post: Point us to a specific place in the text (from 1-10 lines) that you want us to discuss further in class because it raises an issue or problem in the novel as a whole. Use your blog post to explain your choice. You may find useful information in Stuart Curran's electronic edition of the novel (1818 version; the edition includes this and the 1831), especially in the annotations of highlighted words and phrases.

• Shelley, Frankenstein, Volume II

Group 1 special interest (or wild card) blog post: Point us to a specific place in the text (from 1-10 lines) that you want us to discuss further in class because it raises an issue or problem in the novel as a whole. Use your blog post to explain your choice. You may find useful information in Stuart Curran's electronic edition of the novel, especially in the annotations of highlighted words and phrases. This is the first page of Volume II (1818 version; the edition includes this and the 1831).

• Shelley, Frankenstein, Volume III

Group 2 special interest (or wild card) blog post: Point us to a specific place in the text (from 1-10 lines) that you want us to discuss further in class because it raises an issue or problem in the novel as a whole. Use your blog post to explain your choice. You may find useful information in Stuart Curran's electronic edition of the novel, especially in the annotations of highlighted words and phrases. This is the first page of Volume III (1818 version; the edition includes this and the 1831).

• James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), introduction (by Adrian Hunter) and pp. 45-88

• We will also spend some class time discussing annotated bibliographies today.
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell only): Wollstonecraft as novelist and supernatural fiction writer

Group 3 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE
VIA EMAIL ON FRIDAY, APRIL 15TH (ANY TIME)

• Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 88-180

Group 1 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 180-233

Group 2 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Ian Duncan, " Authenticity Effects: The Work of Fiction in Romantic Scotland" (use the PDF link at the top)

• Penny Fielding, "Introduction: Rites of Speech" and "'Mere Reading': Literacy and Orality 1800-1850" from Writing and Orality: Nationality, Culture, and Nineteenth-Century Scottish Fiction

Group 3 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

We will devote today's class time to individual conferences on your bibliographies and paper projects.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE
THURSDAY, APRIL 28 AT 3:00 p.m.

• George Gordon, Lord Byron, Manfred (1817)
  • Dictionary of Literary Biography (Grinnell 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.

Group 1 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Byron, Don Juan, Dedication and Cantos I and II

Group 2 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

• Michael McGoodwin's plot summary of Don Juan
• Byron, Don Juan, Cantos XV-XVII

Group 3 blog post: special interest (or wild card) blog post, open prompt.

PAPER PROGRESS REPORT DUE BY EMAIL

Last day: wrapping up, composing class cheers and slogans for the big finals parade.