tentative Schedule of required readings and activities
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.
Jan 9 T Introduction to the period, the culture, and the expectations for this course
Jan 11 R Read Introduction (3-30)
William Blake: Introduction (112-15)
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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Jan 16 T Blake, continued
Jan 18 R Anna Letitia Barbauld: Introduction (39-40)
“A Summer Evening’s Meditation” (43), “The Rights of Woman” (48), “Washing Day” (50)
Last day to withdraw from this course without a “W” on your permanent record
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Jan 23 T Charlotte Smith: Introduction (53-54)
“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)
Jan 25 R Mary Robinson: Introduction (77-79)
“January, 1795” (79), “London’s Summer Morning” (81), “The Poor Singing Dame” (81), “The Haunted Beach” (83)
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Jan 30 T William Wordsworth: Introduction (270-72)
Lyrical Ballads: “Goody 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)
Feb 1 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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Feb 6 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), “The Ruined Cottage” (309)
Feb 8 R Wordsworth: “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” (335)
BRIEF PAPER #1 DUE IN CLASS TODAY (or submitted online)
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Feb 13 T Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Introduction (437-39)
“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)
Feb 15 R Coleridge:
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (443), “Frost at Midnight” (477), “Dejection: An Ode” (479), “Kubla Khan”
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Feb 20 T Percy Bysshe Shelley: Introduction (748-51)
“To Wordsworth” (752), “Mont Blanc” (770), “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” (773), “Ozymandias” (776), “England in 1819” (790), “To Sidmouth and Castlereagh” (790), “Ode to the West Wind” (791)
Feb 22 R Shelley: “Adonais” (839); excerpt from A Defence of Poetry (856-69)
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Feb 27 T John Keats: Introduction (901-03)
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (904), “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” (906), “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)
Mar 1 R Keats: “To Autumn” (951), “Ode to a Nightingale” (927), “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (930)
BRIEF PAPER #2 DUE IN CLASS TODAY (or submitted online)
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Mar 6 T The Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Mar 8 R Introduction to The Victorian Age (1017-41)
— The Victorian Individual —
Thomas Carlyle: Introduction (1044-48),from Past and Present: “Democracy” (1067), “Captains of Industry” (1072)
John Stuart Mill: Introduction (1086-88), 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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Mar 13 T Charles Dickens and Victorian Fiction
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
background and study questions for A Christmas Carol
Mar 15 R 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)
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18 – 25 March: SPRING BREAK
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Mar 27 T Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Introduction (1156-59)
“Mariana” (1159), “The Lady of Shalott” (1161), “Ulysses” (1170), “Break, Break, Break” (1174), “Locksley Hall” (1177), “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1235), “Crossing the Bar” (1259
Mar 29 R Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Introduction (1123-24)
“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)
BRIEF PAPER #3 DUE IN CLASS TODAY (or submitted online)
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Apr 3 T Robert Browning: Introduction (1275-78)
“Porphyria’s Lover” (1278), “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” (1280), “My Last Duchess,”(1282), “The Lost Leader” (1283)
Apr 5 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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Apr 10 T Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Introduction (1471-72)
“The Blessed Damozel” (1472), “My Sister’s Sleep” (1476), “Jenny” (1478), “The Sonnet” (1487), “Nuptial Sleep” (1487), “Silent Noon” (1488), “Soul’s Beauty” (1488), “Body’s Beauty” (1488)
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)
– Pre-Raphaelite visual art –
Apr 12 R Walter Pater: Introduction (1537-38)
excerpts from Studies in the History of the Renaissance: “Preface” (1538), “LaGioconda” (1542). “Conclusion” (1543)
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Apr 17 T Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
BRIEF PAPER #4 DUE IN CLASS TODAY (or submitted online)
Apr 19 R Stevenson, continued
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Apr 24 T The close of the Victorian era: Rudyard Kipling: Introduction (1851-53)
“Danny Deever” (1877), “The Widow at Windsor” (1878), “Recessional” (1879), “The White Man’s Burden” (1880)
Apr 26 R Final matters. Discussion concludes, as does the course
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Final Examination: 10:00 – 12:00 a.m. Friday, 4 May
