Lahore University of Management Sciences
LITR 216 – The Romantic Imagination: British Romantic
Poetry
Fall 2011-12
Saeed Ghazi, Ph.D.
Office Ext: 8109
Office Hours: Friday 2:30 -- 5:30pm
E-mail: [email protected]
Pre-requisite
There are no pre-requisites for this course but LITR 100 Introduction to Literature in
English is strongly recommended.
I Course Description
This four unit sophomore level survey course will examine the poetic achievements of
the six canonical poets of the romantic age: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. Their critical
achievements and the philosophical underpinnings of their critical affiliations will also
receive close scrutiny. As a philosophical movement, Romanticism is frequently
represented as emerging as a reaction and response to the exaltation and enthronement of
reason that characterized the Enlightenment. As a specifically literary movement, it
proclaims its emancipation from the constricting framework of the Neo-Classical period.
British Romantic poetry emerges in a tumultuous age and is simultaneously a product of
and productive of revolutions. In the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”, Wordsworth
reconceives the role of the poet and heralds a thematic, stylistic, and conceptual
revolution in poetry with his declaration that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings” and his affirmation that poetry should be written in a language
accessible to ordinary people. It is a critical commonplace that Romantic poets
distinguish themselves from their poetic predecessors through “the primacy accorded to
the imagination.” The imaginative faculty as conceived by many of the Romantics
obliterates differences and distinctions enabling the artist/poet to simultaneously perceive
a spirit manifest in nature and the kinship of human nature and the natural world. In this
course, we will attempt to scrutinize, interrogate, contest, and deconstruct several of these
and other assumptions about Romanticism. A variety of reading/interpretive strategies
will be employed during the course including close reading (New Critical),
Deconstructive, Reader-Response, and New Historicist.
II Course Objectives
This sophomore level survey course seeks to accomplish two principal objectives:
A) To provide students with an overview and a critical understanding of one of the most
fertile and productive periods in the history of English Poetry; to acquaint students with
the distinctive characteristics of the romantic age.
B) To acquaint students with the nature, scale of achievement, and the distinguishing
characteristics of the six canonical poets of the period.
III Grading and Attendance Policy
There will be 28 sessions of class each 110 minutes in length.
Students will write a brief response paper based on the assigned readings at the start of
each class. Students will take a mid-term, a final exam, and write an 8-10 page research
paper (2,500 words) on a topic of their choice from within the field of British
Romanticism. They are required to submit a research proposal two weeks after the Mid
term exam. The research paper, which is due on the Friday of Week 14, should strictly
adhere to the MLA (Modern Language Association) format.
The break up of the Instruments is as follows:
1. Mid Term
25%
2. Final Exam
25%
3. Research Paper
25%
4. Viva
10%
5. Response Papers/
Impromptu Presentations
15%
IV Schedule
1. Introduction to the Course
Introduction to Poetry; Figures of Speech; Poetic Forms
2. The Philosophical Underpinnings of English and German Romanticism;
Introduction to the Kantian revolution; subject-object relationship
3. Social, Cultural, and Political Background to English Romanticism;
William Blake (1757-1827), from “Songs of Innocence and Experience”
4. William Blake, from “Songs of Innocence and Experience”
5. William Blake, from “Songs of Innocence and Experience”
6. Maurice Bowra, “The Romantic Imagination”; Marshall Brown, “Romanticism
and Enlightenment”;T.S. Eliot, “William Blake”; Harold Bloom, “On Milton”
7. William Wordsworth (1770-1850), “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”; Selections
from “Lyrical Ballads”; Paul Hamilton, “Wordsworth and Romanticism”; Seamus
Perry, “Wordsworth and Coleridge”
8. “Tintern Abbey”
9.
“Ode on Intimations of Immortality”
10. The Prelude, Book I
11. The Prelude, Book II
12. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), from Biographia Literaria
The primary and secondary imagination; fancy and imagination; Thomas
McFarland, “Coleridge‟s Theory of the Imagination”
13. “Kubla Khan”
14. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
15. Mid Term
16. “Dejection: An Ode”; “Christabel”
17. Lord Byron (1788-1824), “She Walks in Beauty”; from Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage
18. from Don Juan; Maurice Bowra, “Don Juan”
19. from Manfred
20. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), “The Defense of Poetry”; Thomas Love
Peacock, “The Four Ages of Poetry”
21. “Ode to a West Wind”
22. “To a Skylark”
23. Prometheus Unbound; Maurice Bowra, “Prometheus Unbound”
24. John Keats (1795-1821), Selections from his Letters, „Negative capability‟ vs.
„Egotistical sublime‟; “To Autumn”
25. “Ode to a Nightingale”
26. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” ; Maurice Bowra, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
27. from “Endymion”
28. “The Eve of St.Agnes”
V Issues that we will grapple with
1. Is there one Romanticism or are there many? / Is there one Enlightenment or are
there many?
2. Did the Romantic Movement emerge as a response/reaction to the Enlightenment
or was it a product of the late Enlightenment?
3. Creeping conservatism: reactionary elements in romantic thought. Controversies
between the older and the younger romantics.
4. The politics of canon formations. How are canons formed? Is there a compelling
case for the expansion of the canon in the Romantic period?
5.
The impact of Godwin
6. Schelling‟s influence on Coleridge
7. Romanticism and Neo-Classicism
8. Romanticism and realism
9. Dionysus and Apollo
10. Prometheus and Job; Athens and Jerusalem