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CS92PROD
Romantic Poetry and the Sense of History
ENGL 334
Spring 2017 not offered

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.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
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