Fall 2005 Courses
English 330: The Romantic Period (Çelikkol)
MWF 1:10-2:10
Old
Main 111
Romantic Poetry and the Individual
In this course, we will examine the figures of the outcast, the child, and the
wanderer in Romantic poetry. How did these figures shape and reiterate
Romanticism’s emphasis on imaginative spontaneity and emotional intensity? How
did they embody the spirit of republicanism that emerged in the aftermath of
the French and American Revolutions? This course focuses especially on the
resonance of Romantic aesthetics with individualism. We will link the Romantic
emphasis on inward contemplation and self-expression to philosophical
discussions of individual liberty and equality. Why, for example, did Romantic
poets claim to translate unique individual experiences into poetic verse? The
reading list includes lyric and narrative poems by Anna Letitia Barbauld,
William Blake, Joanna Baillie, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel
Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats, and Felicia Hemans. We will
supplement these readings with prose writings from the period (Thomas Paine,
William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft) and literary theory.
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