TEXTS: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volumes D (The Romantic Period) and E (The Victorian Age)
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Beginning page numbers for each selection are indicated in parentheses. Unless otherwise indicated, you are to read the entire selection. Many of these are excerpts rather than complete works; in these cases you should read all of the excerpt provided in the anthology.
ALSO: Be sure to read the introductions to the individual authors! You’ll get a lot of good background that will help you with the reading selections.
Aug 27 T: Introduction to the period, the culture, and the expectations for this course
Aug 29 R: William Blake: Songs of Innocence: “Introduction” (118), “The Ecchoing Green” (119), “The Lamb” (120), “The Little Black Boy” (120), “The Chimney Sweeper” (121), “Holy Thursday” (122), “Nurse’s Song” (123); Songs of Experience: “Introduction” (125), “Earth’s Answer” (125), “The Clod & the Pebble” (127), “Holy Thursday” (127), “The Chimney Sweeper” (128), “Nurse’s Song” (128), “The Tyger” (129), “London” (132), “A Poison Tree” (134)
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Sep 3 T: Blake: Songs, continued
Sep 5 R: Charlotte Smith: “Written at the Close of Spring” (54), “To Sleep” (54), “To Night” (55), “Written in the Church-Yard as Middleton in Sussex” (55), “On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic” (56), “The Sea-View” (56)
Mary Robinson: “January, 1795” (79), “London’s Summer Morning” (81), “The Poor Singing Dame” (81), “The Haunted Beach” (83)
Sep 6 F: Last day to withdraw from this course without a “W” on your permanent record
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Sep 10 T: William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads: “Good Blake and Harry Gill” (272), “Simon Lee” (275), “We Are Seven” (278), “Lines Written in Early Spring” (280), “Expostulation and Reply” (280), “The Tables Turned” (281), “The Thorn” (282), “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (288), Preface to Lyrical Ballads excerpts (292-304)
Sep 12 R: Wordsworth: sonnets: “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” (344), “It is a Beauteous Evening” (345), “To Toussaint l’Ouverture” (345), “September 1st, 1802” (346), “London, 1802” (346), “The world is too much with us” (347), “Surprised by joy” (347), “Mutability” (348), “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways” (348)
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Sep 17 T: Wordsworth: “Strange fits of passion have I known” (305), “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” (305), “Three years she grew” (306), “A slumber did my spirit seal” (307), “I travelled among unknown men” (307), “Resolution and Independence” (330), “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (334)
Sep 19 R: Wordsworth: “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” (335)
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Sep 24 T: Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “The Eolian Harp” (439), “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” (441),“To Wordsworth” (484), from Biographia Literaria: “Mr. Wordsworth’s Earlier Poems” (488), “On fancy and imagination” (490), “On the imagination, or esemplastic power” (491)
Sep 26 R: International Conference on Romanticism – no class
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Oct 1 T: Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (443), “Frost at Midnight” (477), “Dejection: An Ode” (479), “Kubla Khan”
Mary Robinson: “To the Poet Coleridge” (86)
Oct 3 R: George Gordon, Lord Byron: “Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos” (616), “She Walks in Beauty” (617), “Darkness” (618), “So, we’ll go no more a roving” (620), Byron: Don Juan, Canto I (673-704)
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Oct 8 T: Percy Bysshe Shelley: “To Wordsworth” (752), “Mont Blanc” (770), “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” (773), “Ozymandias” (776)
Oct 10 R: Shelley: “Stanzas Written in Dejection – December 1818, near Naples” (778), “England in 1819” “To Sidmouth and Castlereagh” (790), “Ode to the West Wind” (791), Shelley: “Adonais” (839); excerpt from A Defence of Poetry (856-69)
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Oct 15 T: John Keats: “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (904), “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” “When I have fears that I may cease to be” (911); “The Eve of St. Agnes” (912),“Ode to Psyche” (925), “Ode on Melancholy” (931), “Ode on Indolence” (933)
Oct
17 R: Keats: “To Autumn” (951), “Ode to a Nightingale” (927), “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (930)
☞ Midterm Essay Exam due IN CLASS today ☜
Last day to change registration to or from “Pass / No Pass”
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Oct 22 T: Fall Break – no class
Oct 24 R: Introduction to the Victorian Period:
Introduction to The Victorian Age (1017-41)
– The Victorian Individual –
Thomas Carlyle: from Past and Present: “Democracy” (1067), “Captains of Industry” (1072)
John Stuart Mill: from On Liberty: “Of Individuality as One of the Elements of Well-Being (1095), from The Subjection of Women: excerpt from Chapter 1 (1105)
Sarah Stickney Ellis: “The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits” (1610)
Coventry Patmore: from The Angel in the House: “The Paragon” (1613)
Mona Caird: from Marriage (1630)
Walter Besant: from “The Queen’s Reign”: “The Transformation of Women’s Status between 1837 and 1897" (1634)
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Oct 29 T: 19th-century British visual art
John Ruskin: from Modern Painters: “A Definition of Greatness in Art” (1338), “The Slave Ship” (1339)
Oct 31 R: Charles Dickens and Victorian Fiction
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
background and study questions for A Christmas Carol
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Nov 5 T: Dickens, A Christmas Carol, continued; see also
The Children’s Employment Commission: from “First Report” (1587)
Friedrich Engels: from “The Great Towns” (1589)
Charles Kingsley: from Alton Locke (1597)
Nov 7 R: Dickens, A Christmas Carol, continued
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Nov 12 T: Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Mariana” (1159), “The Lady of Shalott” (1161), “Ulysses” (1170), “Tithonus” (1172), “Break, Break, Break” (1174), “Locksley Hall” (1177), “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1235), “Crossing the Bar” (1259)
Nov 14 R: Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “The Cry of the Children “ (1124), from Sonnets from the Portuguese: “Say over again” (1129), “When our two souls” (1129), “The first time” (1130), “How do I love thee?” (1130), “Mother and Poet” (1152)
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Nov 19 T: Robert Browning: “Porphyria’s Lover” (1278), “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” (1280), “My
Last Duchess” (1282), “The Lost Leader” (1283)
Nov 21 R: Robert Browning: “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church” (1286), “Fra Lippo
Lippi” (1300), “Andrea del Sarto” (1309)
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Nov 26 T: Dante Gabriel Rossetti: “The Blessed Damozel” (1472), “My Sister’s Sleep” (1476), “Jenny” (1478), “The Sonnet” (1487), “Nuptial Sleep” (1487), “Silent Noon” (1488), “Soul’s Beauty” (1488; Sibylla Palmifera [Soul's Beauty]), “Body’s Beauty” (1488; Lady Lilith )
John Ruskin: excerpt from “Pre-Raphaelitism” (1468)
William Michael Rossetti: “The Pre-Raphaelite Manifesto” (1470)
Nov 28 R: Thanksgiving Break – no class
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Dec 3 T: Christina Rossetti: Song: “She sat and sang alway” (1490), Song: “When I am dead, my dearest” (1490), “After Death” (1491), “Dead before Death” (1491), “Cobwebs” (1492), “In an Artist’s Studio” (1493), “No, Thank You, John’” (1508), “Promises Like Pie-Crust” (1509), sonnet from Later Life (1510), “Sleeping at Last” (1511)
Dec 5 R: Walter Pater: excerpts from Studies in the History of the Renaissance: “Preface” (1538), “La Gioconda” (1542). “Conclusion” (1543)
☞ Course Portfolio due IN CLASS today ☜
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Dec 10 T: Oscar Wilde: “Impression du Matin” (1722), “The Harlot’s House” (1722), excerpt from The Critic as Artist (1723), Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1732)
read also “Late Victorians” (1668-71)
Rudyard Kipling: “Danny Deever” (1877), “The Widow at Windsor” (1878), “Recessional” (1879),
“The White Man’s Burden” (1880)
Dec 12 R: Discussion concludes, as does the course
Final Examination: 10:00
- 12:00 Wednesday, 18 December
