ENGL 2060 Topics in Literature
Sample Syllabus 1
●Course:
ENGL 2060-XX Topics in Literature: British Romantic Poets
●Course Description:
This course will look deeply into British Romanticism, surveying the important
texts of the important British romanticists such as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Byron, Shelley, and Keats. We will also as a class and as individuals investigate
important critical and theoretical discussions of romanticism. First, we will start
by looking into German idealism and romanticism to see how those works
influence and shape the foundations for the romantic mode of literature
throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. We will also investigate
the gothic roots of romanticism, and see how it stretched beyond just the taste for
the supernatural. We will then see how these British writers created their works
as well as their own poetics. At all times we will be reading the works for their
meaning, in addition to the more philosophical elements and implications of
romantic art.
●Course Outcomes:
Upon completion, students will be able to:
Read and comprehend writings from the romantic period in a range of genres,
forms, or medium.
Recognize different genres and subgenres of romanticism and articulate how
they inform content and meaning in texts.
Identify and discuss multiple levels of meanings in texts, including analyzing
figurative language.
Evaluate and arbitrate competing interpretations of literary texts from your own
readings, from class discussions, and from readings of secondary sources
Connect texts to historical, intellectual, and cultural contexts
Articulate commonalities and differences among the goals, ideas, and forms of
romantic writers and their works.
Write textual analysis and criticism by constructing a thesis, gathering evidence,
integrating sources and organizing elements of an argument
●Course Texts:
Primary Textbooks:
Volume Four of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Age of
Romanticism. Broadview Press, 2006. Eds. Joseph Black, et al.
Anne Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho. (I ordered the Dover edition, but any
good edition will suffice).
Primary Reserve Books:
Romanticism and Consciousness. Harold Bloom, editor.
Comparative Romanticisms. Larry H. Peer and Diane Long Hoeveler, editors.
Postmodern Literary Theory: an Introduction. By Niall Lucy.
Secondary Reserve Books (for your perusal and investigation):
Basic Writings of Kant. By Immanuel Kant.
Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics. By GWF Hegel.
The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism. By
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy.
From Romanticism to Critical Theory. By Andrew Bowie.
The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism. Stuart Curran, editor.
Romantic Natural Histories. Ashton Nichols, editor.
The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Imagination.
By M.H. Abrams
●Course Procedures:
All students will produce the following:
Responses to Readings/Participation:
Responses: To make sure that you keep up with the readings, I will require short
1-2 paragraph responses to the readings every class meeting. These will
actually help you much more than you think they will. Their content can be
whatever you want, but relevant, and they can cover one of the readings or more
for that particular day.
Participation: It should be understood that your participation and contribution to
a group like this is very important. To emphasize that, your participation and
contribution will be assessed by me as part of your overall grade. This
assessment will be highly subjective on my part, so fake that enthusiasm and
interest if it isn’t there.
--45%
Research Paper: Longer, researched written essay, which can be a critical
reading of a work or romanticism, or a core feature present in a few works of
romanticism. 10 to 12 pages, at least two secondary sources used.
--25%
Tests: We will have three tests, each consisting of identification of passages and
a written essay, where you show off your ability to assess the history and
development of romanticism, as well as your understanding of these difficult yet
important texts.
--10% each, for a total of 30%
Schedule of Readings and Assignments:
Week 1
Introduction to romanticism
The roots of romanticism: German idealism and romanticism
Anne Radcliffe
The Mysteries of Udolpho [selections]
Week 2
Anna Laetitia Barbauld 1-2
“Washing Day” 2-3
“To a Little Invisible Being” 9
“The Rights of Woman” 10
Robert Burns, 115-16
“To a Mouse” 116-17
“The Fornicator” 117
“Comin’ thro’ the Rye” 125-26
“Address to the Devil” 122-23
Week 3
William Blake, 33-55
Songs of Innocence and Experience 36-44
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 44-55
Week 4
William Wordsworth, 191-93
“The world is too much with us” 223
Preface to Lyrical Ballads 202-09
“Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” 200-02
“Expostulation and Reply” 199
“Lucy Gray” 211-12
“Ode: Intimations of Immortality” 228-31
Week 5
William Wordsworth
“Mutability” 238
“I wandered lonely as a cloud” 225
The Prelude
Bk I 255-58
Bk II 258-61
Bk VI 261-62
Bk XIII 262-63
Bk XIV 263-65
Week 6
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 297-98
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” 305-315
“Christabel” 316-25
“The Eolian Harp” 299
“Kubla Khan” 328-29
“Dejection: an Ode” 325-26
“Fears in Solitude” 299-302
Week 7
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
from Biographia Literaria
“The Effect of Contemporary Writers on Youthful Minds” 332
Chap 4 333-36
Chap 11 336-37
Chap 13 337
Chap 14 338-41
Week 8
Thomas De Quincey
Confessions of an Opium Eater (excerpts) 434-477
William Hazlitt 418-19
prose writings 419-32
Week 9
Lord Byron 526-28
“She Walks in Beauty” 528-29
“Darkness” 530-31
from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (on reserve)
Week 10
Lord Byron
Manfred GO TO www.litgothic.com/Texts/manfred.html
Don Juan dedication and Canto I 537-67
Niall Lucy, “Simulation and the Sublime,” which is chapter 2
from Lucy’s Postmodern Literary Theory
ON
RESERVE
Week 11
Percy Bysshe Shelley 612-13
“Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitude” 614-24
“Mutability” 624 “Mutability” 642
“Mont Blanc” 624-26
“Lift Not the Painted Veil” 643
Prometheus Unbound GO TO
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/prometheus.html
Week 12
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” 626-27
“Ode to the West Wind” 628-29
“To a Skylark” 630-32
“Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of Keats” 632-40
“A Defence of Poetry” 652-60
Week 13
John Keats 699-700
Letter to Benjamin Bailey 740-41
Letter to George and Georgiana Keats 747-50
Letter to George and Thomas Keats 741-42
Letter to Shelley 751
“When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be” 707-08
“The Eve of St. Agnes” 710-15
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” 716-17
Week 14
John Keats
“Ode to Psyche” 718
“Ode to a Nightingale” 719
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” 720-21
“Ode on Melancholy” 721
“Ode on Indolence” 722-23
“To Autumn” 723
*Geoffrey Hartman, “Romanticism and ‘Anti-Self-Consciousness’”
from Romanticism and Unconsciousness ON RESERVE