The period 1785-1840, often referred to as “the Romantic period”, saw a number of revolutions: in the history of ideas, the world of sense and feelings—in fact a general cultural revolution. We still live in a post-Romantic era: we are concerned about the relationship between man and nature, and that between the individual and society. Lord Byron took his bear for walks in London, and died of fever while serving as a soldier in the effort to liberate Greece from the Ottoman Empire. Shelley would receive his guests dressed only in a coat, the pockets filled with the nuts and dried fruit he habitually ate, but he too was politically active in promoting Irish identity, and described himself as a “philanthropist, democrat and atheist”. This period sees many such paradoxes, along with many great names. Compare and contrast the dutiful Jane Austen, the “ageing spinster”, who tried to conceal her profession as novelist under the mantle of that most womanly of activities, letter-writing, with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, daughter of radical parents and herself an unmarried mother, who at the age of 19 gave literary expression to one of the greatest myths in her novel Frankenstein. As with previous courses, this one will embrace a variety of genres and forms (the ballad, the ode, the lyric poem, the revival of the sonnet, historical novels, journals, diaries and autobiography). Characteristic literary preoccupations in this period include history and aesthetics.
Onderwijsvorm
Two-hour seminar per week.
Literatuur
*_The Norton Anthology of English Literature_, Vol. II, gen.ed. M.H. Abrams, 7th edition. *Jane Austen, Persuasion (Penguin Classics).
Toetsing
One 1200-word essay (25%) and one test (75%); class participation is a requirement.