1. Introductions. Students: Names, IDs, tel, email (if used). Course
outline
2. Reading: Wu book. Romanticism CD in Rutherford S; includes
Wu, 1st edition.
Wu: suggested reading, Introduction (xxx-xlii), review Chronology (xlviii-lxiii);
and introductory headnotes to each writer we study (e.g., Coleridge, 592- )
Plus Gothic novels The Italian, Frankenstein 1818
3. "Romantic"
"romantic" as a term: romances; 18th C application to scenery;
but difficulties of term as a literary period/genre (1789-1834)
primitivism; the wild, untamed, native genius (Shakespeare), back to nature
(Rousseau, Social Contract 1762);
Percy Reliques (1765), cf. Coleridge (Wu 673), "Mariner"
-- as entertainment (the tour, in search of the picturesque, Gothic; Pope's
"ruins" for Lord Bathurst, Alfred's Hall, 1721)
-- Romantic poets: in search of origins (Wordsworth: Wu 467), aligns human with
natural
raises questions of identity, culture, politics; beginning of modern period,
issues we face (e.g., ecology)
4. Political:
French Revolution (1789-1795); Napoleonic wars (Waterloo: 1815; cf. Byron, Wu
856-61)
Repression at home: 1794 Treason trials (Thelwall, Wu 316-7); 1819 Peterloo
(cf. Wu 1049)
Industrialization, agricultural revolution (enclosure)
Radical thinkers: Paine, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Thelwall
-- early influence on poets: Coleridge; Wordsworth; Shelley;
later conservatism, notably Wordsworth
5. Literary establishment
new journals, e.g., Edinburgh Review, Blackwells Magazine
-- power of; Croker's review of Endymion (Quarterly Review, Apr
1818) of Keats -- Shelley's comment (Wu 1200)
Coleridge, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Lamb, as journalists
(Habermas, public sphere: contest of ideologies)
-- explosive growth of novel, especially Gothic (influence on poetry; P. Shelley
as author of; Frankenstein)
6. Literary theory
Conscious defences of principles, i.e., Wordsworth, Advertisement (330); Shelley,
Defence of Poetry (1184);
-- see also Coleridge, Biographia (691-694); Keats (1350-1 on negative
capability; 1353 on "Tintern Abbey")
Poetic diction: reaction against 18th C
Self of poet; redemptive example (inward version following failure of French
Revolution; cf. "This Lime-Tree Bower" 613)
Imagination; spontaneity ("if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to
a tree it had better not come at all": Keats to John Taylor 27 Feb 1818)
Stripping the veil: defamiliarizing; supernatural, sublime; apocalypticism (e.g.,
Wordsworth, "Crossing the Alps" 553)
Romantic heroism, individualism, transgression; the Byronic (Manfred)
7. Romantic geography
Britain: poets as provincial or outsiders, or exiles;
-- Provinces: see map, frontispiece to Wu
Europe; influence of Byron
Romance: OED.
The vernacular language of France, as opposed to Latin. In later use also extended
to related forms of speech, as Provençal and Spanish, and now commonly used
as a generic or collective name for the whole group of languages descended from
Latin.
A tale in verse, embodying the adventures of some hero of chivalry, esp. of
those of the great cycles of mediæval legend, and belonging both in matter and
form to the ages of knighthood; also, in later use, a prose tale of a similar
character.
A fictitious narrative in prose of which the scene and incidents are very remote
from those of ordinary life; esp. one of the class prevalent in the 16th and
17th centuries, in which the story is often overlaid with long disquisitions
and digressions. Also occas., a long poem of a similar type.
That class of literature which consists of romances; romantic fiction. spec.
a love story; that class of literature which consists of love stories.
Or sweetest Shakespear, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
-- John Milton, "L'Allegro" 133-4
Rousseau, Emile (opening paragraph, Book I)
Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the author of things, everything
degenerates in the hands of man. He forces one soil to nourish the products
of another, one tree to bear the fruits of another. He mixes and confuses the
climates, the elements, the seasons. He mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave.
He turns everything upside down, he disfigures everything, he loves deformities,
monsters. He wants nothing as nature made it, not even man himself. For him
man must be trained like a saddle-horse; he must be shaped according to the
fashion, like trees in his garden.
Document created January 7th 2008