WiSe 14/15: Postcol. Lit.a.Variet. of Engl.-HS-Romanticism, Empire, and the Subject
Jennifer Wawrzinek
Comments
Recent Romanticism scholarship has begun to re-examine British texts produced at the end of the long 18th Century within the context of a rapdily expanding British Empire, the exploration and colonisation of the Americas, Africa, Australia and the Asian subcontinent. Yet this period was also one that saw an intensification of radical dissenting movements and an increasing concern with the question of rights, from abolitionist campaigns, to calls for the equality and emancipation of women, to the founding of the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals. This course will examine texts from the long 18th Century that variously negotiate, reinscribe or destablise constructions of identity, self and the nation seen to be universal, active and desiring. We will read a selection of texts from the end of the Long Eighteenth Century in order to critically examine the ways in which various Romantic writers articulate or destabilise a transcendental consciousness that is often seen both as the distinctive innovation of Romanticism and as the key force underwriting the burgeoning British Empire.
NB: This course is offered in conjunction with MA-T 17401 "Literature and Alterity". Students must enrol in both components of the module in order to participate in either course.
Set Texts: Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals. Oxford World's Classics, 2008 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Penguin Classics, 2012 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Penguin Classics, 2011
NB: Course readings will be made
close16 Class schedule
Regular appointments