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CS92PROD
Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth
ENGL 320
Spring 2015 not offered

In Wordsworth's day, Shakespeare and Milton represented two clearly divergent conceptions of poetry and the poet. Shakespeare was the chameleon poet who disappeared inside his characters, the self-made man who worked in a commercial theater, and the original artist who reinvented both lyric and dramatic verse. Milton was the wise poet whose presence was always palpable, the political writer who worked for a revolutionary democracy, and the Janus-faced artist who generated a synthesis between received and new forms. Wordsworth's reading of Shakespeare and Milton partook of these Romantic ideas, and it also exceeded them. In this course, we will examine the legacies that Shakespeare and Milton left to Wordsworth, and the many uses he made of them, from formal innovations in blank verse and a dynamic interaction among lyric, drama, and epic; to generic preoccupations with the sonnet and the monologue; to political questions concerning the narration of revolution and the representation of anarchy; to philosophical problems about individual identity, responsibility, and agency.
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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