Required Texts:

• Wolfson and Manning, eds. Longman Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2A:  The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. 5th Ed. NY:  Longman, 2012.
  
• Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Donald Gray. 3rd Ed. NY: Norton, 2001.
  
• Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. 2nd Ed. NY: Norton, 2012.

• Students will become more familiar with the lives and writings of both canonical and non-canonical writers of the English Romantic period.
• Students will develop a better understanding of the historical context within which the texts of period were written, as well as the influence historical events had on the minds and the writings of the literary figures under consideration.
• Students will investigate the connections between individuals' more personal experiences and their literary productions, and be able to appreciate the importance of intertextual and interpersonal connections among different writers.
• Students will develop their ability to provide informed interpretations, in both oral and written forms, of the literature they have read, making use of critical research as necessary.

• Students are required to attend class and to be active participants in class discussions.  Therefore, all readings for the week are expected to be completed before coming to class.
• In addition, each student will develop a presentation to be selected from the assigned readings.  These presentations will be a minimum of thirty minutes long and may include incorporation of secondary source discussion, but such discussion is not required.
• To be clear, though, ALL secondary sources must be CLEARLY cited in the written version of the presentation.  Oral citation of sources will be insufficient and may lead to serious consequences (Please familiarize yourself with the Graduate School's guidelines on academic dishonesty, which can be found in the most recent catalog).
• Students will also be expected to provide written responses to the literature we have read. Written assignments will include weekly brief response papers (ca. 500 words) on the texts assigned for the course, one slighty longer critical response paper, and one fully-documented critical research paper. The first critical response paper will be 1500 words (ca. five pages) and will reflect the student's individual interpretation of a particular work, without the incorporation of secondary source material.  The final research paper, of course, will need to incorporate at least eight secondary sources, consisting of recent critical discussion of the topic selected by the students, and will be a minimum of 6000 words (about 20 pages).
• The critical response paper and research paper must be on two separate subjects.
•  Written assignments are due by the end of the business day on the due date. Late papers will be penalized.

Assignment List (Subject to Subtle Revision):

Aug	28	Class Introduction
Sept	4	French Revolution: 108-49 Wordsworth: 410-11 The Prelude, from Bks. 9-10, 477-78, 514-30 Recommended: Gravil, "Some Other Being" Recommended: from Fulford, Romanticism and Masculinity (Handout)
	11	Blake: 169-71 Religion poems: 172-76 Songs of Innocence and Experience: 176-203 "Marriage of Heaven and Hell": 203-16 Recommended: Welch, "Blake's Songs" Deadline for Selection of Presentation Topics
	18	Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads: 411-45 Coleridge: 624-25 "Ancient Mariner": 632-49, 651 Biographia Literaria, from chs. 13-14, 17 & 22: 686-96 Recommended: Richardson, "The Politics of Childhood"
	25	Dorothy WW, Journals and Poems: 592-611 William WW: "Nutting": 450-52 and Handout "London, 1802": 476-77 "Resolution and Independence": 545-49 "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud": 551 "My Heart Leaps Up": 552 "Ode: Intimations of Immortality": 552-58 Recommended: Soderholm, "Dorothy Wordsworth's Return" Recommended: Jones, "Rude Intercourse"
Oct	2	Coleridge: "Frost at Midnight": 630-33 "Christabel": 652-68 "Kubla Khan": 669-71 "Pains of Sleep": 673-74 "Dejection: An Ode": 674-78 Recommended: Lawder, "Secret(ing) Conversations" Critical Response Paper Due
	9	Austen, Pride and Prejudice Recommended: Duckworth, "Reconstitution of Society": 306-15 Recommended: Johnson, "Pursuit of Happiness": 348-55 Deadline for Submission of Research Paper Abstracts
	16	Byron: 708-10 Manfred: 711-47 The Byronic Hero, 747-53 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: 765-79 Recommended: Cantor, "The Politics of the Epic"
	23	Byron, from Don Juan: 781-862 and Recommended: LaChance, "Don Juan"
	30	Percy Shelley: 868-70 "To Wordsworth": 870-71 Alastor: "Mont Blanc": 871-75  "Sonnet: England in 1819": 878 "Mask of Anarchy": 879-88 Defence of Poetry: 920-30 Recommended: Carothers, "Alastor"
Nov	6	PBS, "Ode to the West Wind": 889-91 "To a Skylark": 891-93 Adonais: 894-909 Byron's Responses: 909-11 Prometheus Unbound Recommended: Jost, "Anatomy of an Ode"
	13	Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Recommended: Mellor, "Possessing Nature": 355-68 Recommended: Lipking, "Frankenstein, the True Story": 416-34
	20	Keats: 973-75 "La Belle Dame Sans Merci": 999-1002 (see also Letter to Benjamin Bailey: 1052) Odes: 1003-14 (see also Letters to George & Thomas Keats, 1046-47, and to George & Georgiana Keats, 1056-57) Fall of Hyperion, 1031-44 (see also Letter to Josh Reynolds: 1049-51) Recommended: Kelley, "La Belle Dame"
	27	Hemans: 930-32 "Casabianca": 939-40 Records of Woman: 940-55 Responses: 957-61 Recommended: Lootens, "Hemans and Home"
Dec	4	Popular Prose: 1086-87 Lamb: 1087-1098 Hazlitt: 1098-14 De Quincey: 1114-42 Recommended: Fang, "Empire, Coleridge, and Lamb"
	11	Final Exam
	16	Final Research Paper Due

Select Bibliography:

• Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. NY: Norton, 1973.
• Blank, G. Kim. Wordsworth’s Influence on Shelley. NY: St. Martin’s, 1988.
• Blumberg, Jane. Mary Shelley’s Early Novels: ‘This Child of Imagination and Misery.’ Iowa City: U Iowa P, 1993.
• Cantor, Paul. "The Politics of the Epic: Wordsworth, Byron, and the Romantic Reformation of Heroism." The Review of Politics 69.3 (2007): 375-401.
  
• Carothers, Yvonne. "Alastor: Shelley Corrects Wordsworth."Modern Language Quarterly 42.1 (1981): 21-47.
• Clark, Timothy. Embodying Revolution:  The Figure of the Poet in Shelley. NY: Oxford, 1989.
• Curran, Stuart, ed. The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism. NY: Cambridge UP, 1993.
• Fang, Karen. "Empire, Coleridge, and Charles Lamb's Consumer Imagination." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 43.4 (2003): 815-43.
  
• Gill, Stephen. Wordsworth:  A Life. NY: Oxford, 1990.
• Gravil, Richard. "'Some Other Being'": Wordsworth in 'The Prelude.'" The Yearbook of English Studies. 19 (1989): 127-43.
  
• Holmes, Richard. Coleridge:  Early Visions. NY: Penguin, 1990.
• ---. Shelley:  The Pursuit. NY: NY Review of Books, 2003.
• Jacobus, Mary. Romanticism, Writing, and Sexual Difference: Essays on The Prelude. NY: Oxford, 1989.
• Jones, Gregory. "'Rude Intercourse': Uncensoring Wordsworth's 'Nutting.'" Studies in Romanticism 35.2 (1996): 213-43.
• Jost, François. "Anatomy of an Ode: Shelley and the Sonnet Tradition." Comparative Literature 34.3 (1982): 223-46.
• Kelley, Theresa. "Poetics and the Politics of Reception: Keats's 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci." ELH 54.2 (1987): 333-62.
  
• LaChance, Charles. "Don Juan, 'a problem, like all things." Papers on Language & Literature 34. 3 (1998): 273-300.
  
• Lawder, Bruce. "Secret(ing) Conversations: Coleridge and Wordsworth." New Literary History 32.1 (2001): 67-89.
  
• Levin, Susan. Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1987. Rpt. NY: McFarland, 2009.
  
• Lootens, Tricia. "Hemans and Home: Victorianism, Feminine 'Internal Enemies,' and the Domestication of National Identity." PMLA 109.2 (1994): 238-53.
  
• Makdisi, Saree. William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2002.
• McCalman, Iain.  An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832. NY: Oxford UP, 1999.
• McGann, Jerome. Byron and Romanticism. NY: Cambridge UP, 2002.
• ---.  The Romantic Ideology. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1985.
• Mellor, Anne.  Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters.  NY: Routledge, 1989.
• ---. Romanticism and Feminism.  Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.
• Motion, Andrew.  Keats. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1999.
• Richardson, Alan. "The Politics of Childhood: Wordsworth, Blake, and Catechistic Method." ELH 56.4 (1989): 853-68.
  
• Soderholm, James. "Dorothy Wordsworth's Return to Tintern Abbey." New Literary History 26.2 (1995): 309-22.
  
• Sunstein, Emily.  Mary Shelley:  Romance and Reality.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991.
• Sweet, Nanora, and Julie Melnyk, eds. Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century. NY: Palgrave, 2001.
• Thompson, E. P. Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law. NY: New Press, 1993.
  
• Vendler, Helen. The Odes of John Keats. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.
• Welch, Dennis. "Blake's Songs of Experience: The Word Lost and Found." English Studies 76.3 (1995): 238-52.