Romantic Poetry and the Sense of History
ENGL 334
Spring 2014
| Section:
01
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What does history feel like? What does it mean to imagine that your present moment is part of a larger historical trajectory? Or, that you are making history in that moment? The period of Romanticism, roughly 1780 to 1830, is charged with ideas about revolution, progress, and the power of the imagination. Yet it is also a period deeply obsessed with its relationship to the past in a manner unlike any era before it, as writers and thinkers explored the feel of history in radical new ways. This course will survey the major Romantic poets (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats) with special attention to the sense and meaning of history in their writing. We will read Romantic narratives of personal development, chants of eternal revolution, satires on modern life and government, and excavations and fantasies of a medieval past. We¿ll consider how Romantic writers spun both art and argument on the axis of history and found themselves reflected there, and we¿ll examine in turn our own relationship to the literature of the past as 21st century readers. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
The major poems of William Blake, William Wordsworth, Anna Barbauld, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Felicia Hemans, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon; prose selections from Edmund Burke, Anna Barbauld, William Hazlitt, and others.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Attendance and active class participation; 2 shorter papers and research project. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course fulfills the Literary History II requirement and contributes to the British Literature and Theory and Literary Forms concentrations of the English major. |
| Instructor(s): Sider,Justin Andrew Times: ..T.R.. 09:00AM-10:20AM; Location: FISK115; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 8 | JR major: 8 | | |
| Seats Available: 15 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 1 | JR non-major: 2 | SO: 0 | FR: 0 |
| Web Resources: Syllabus |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 1 |
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