Course Description
It has been said that the British Romantics invented poetry in the modern sense: a highly pitched, emotional, but authentic reaction to the challenges of human existence. Yet most of the poems we associate with Romanticism were composed in response to the tumultuous politics of a period beset by almost constant war, threats of “terror,” massive social and gender inequality, devastating ecological crisis, generational conflict, new technology, and both utopian promise and profound cynicism. Sound familiar?
In this course, we will think about Romantic poetics primarily by way of three fundamental concepts: revolution, nature, and the sublime. We will consider the ways these concepts were shaped by the political conversations of the era and continue to influence the politics of our own day. We will examine the Romantics’ responses to the major political events of their place and time: the French Revolution, the campaign against and the abolition of the slave trade, the War against France, the rise of industrial capitalism, the enclosure of land, the reform of education, and ongoing debates over religion and belief. Readings will draw substantially from the works of the “big six” canonical British Romantic poets, William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats, several women poets, including Ann Yearsley, Helen Maria Williams, Dorothy Wordsworth, Anna Letitia Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith, and a few lesser know poets, such as John Thelwall, Robert Burns, and John Clare. We will also read examples from the journalism and criticism of the period to help us contextualize its politics and poetics. Assignments will assess students’ level of familiarity and engagement with the poems and their willingness and ability to use the poems to address contemporary critical and political issues.
Course Goals and Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course students should:
- Be familiar with the major terms, themes, and texts of British Romantic poetry
- Understand the historical and political contexts in which Romanticism developed
- Be familiar with one or more area of current Romantic criticism
- Be able to summarize critical articles and compile an annotated bibliography
- Understand how to situate their own close readings within a critical field
Required Texts
Romanticism: An Anthology (4th edition), ed. Duncan Wu. Blackwell, 2012.
Available at in hard-copy in the bookstore or as an e-book from Wiley-Blackwell; UBC library has an electronic copy: a limited number of pages can be downloaded.