The Romantic age, the period between c. 1770 and 1830, was not only a politically rebellious phase but also rich in literature, particularly in a poetry that challenged previous conventions. Among the themes of this new poetry were the miraculous, the fantastic, the monstrous, sublime and beautiful nature as well as the rebellious and solitary individual. We will read and discuss poems and some shorter prose texts by William Blake, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Mary Robinson, Percy B. Shelley, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Felicia Hemans. While providing a survey of Romantic-age poetry, this course will also introduce students to more general questions of the period (e.g. print culture and political culture, gender issues) and of poetry analysis.

This is a block seminar (29th, 30th, 31th July: 14-18.30; 1st August: 10-17; 3rd August: 14-18.30).

Among the text we will discuss are: William Blake: "London," "The Lamb," "The Tiger" Charlotte Smith: Sonnet II, III ("Written at the Close of Spring"; "To a Nightingale") William Wordsworth: "The Solitary Reaper," "The Mad Mother" S.T. Coleridge: "The Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan" Mary Robinson: "The Haunted Beach" Percy B. Shelley: "Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind," "England in 1819," "With a Guitar, to Jane," "To a Skylark" John Keats: "On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer," "Ode to a Nightingale,", Lamia Lord Byron:"She Walks in Beauty," "Darkness," Childe Harold: Canto III (stanzas 8-22), possibly also Don Juan: Canto I Felicia Hemans: "The Rock of Cader Idris"

An outline will be made available. If you want to participate and receive the outline in advance, please send me an email by 12 July 2020, suschmid@aol.com.

Recommended background reading: Romanticism: An Anthology, ed. Duncan Wu, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) (or any other edition – please note that the first edition may not contain the same texts). "Introduction" in Romanticism, ed. Wu, pp. xxx-xlii. The British Library, "Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians" https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics [general background and background on our authors as well as several of their texts]. The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry, ed. James Chandler and Maureen N. McLane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).