British Poetry of the Romantic Period

English 4/802                                          

Fall 2004                               
                  

Stephen C. Behrendt     
319 Andrews; 472-1806
office: 2-4 R, and by
appointment

email Stephen C. Behrendt

                      John Constable.  Helmingham Dell. 1825-26.


Course Research Project

The University of Nebraska Libraries houses a unique research archive of Romantic-era literary texts that can be found in only a few other research institutions in the United States:  the "Corvey Collection". This collection, which the University Libraries owns in the form of microfiche copies, includes more than 3200 titles in English alone, including especially prose fiction but also poetry, drama, and other literary texts. The collection covers the entire Romantic period, but it is especially strong in the period after 1815. By connecting on the link indicated above, you can learn more about this remarkable collection of materials. Or, you can click on one of the following links to go directly to a full listing of the volumes of poetry by men or the volumes of poetry by women contained within the English-language section of the Corvey Collection.. The Library also owns the companion archives in French and German literature, which brings the total number of titles included in these three collections to well over 9000. This collection constitutes one of the most comprehensive -- and therefore most valuable -- resources for research in the literary culture of Europe during the Romantic era.

Here at the University of Nebraska we have begun to cooperate with several other institutions -- most notably Sheffield Hallam University (Sheffield, United Kingdom) and Cardiff University (Cardiff, United Kingdom) -- to make available in electronic form to scholars around the world a variety of bibliographical and other supplementary materials relating to the Corvey collection. The project at Sheffield Hallam University focuses particularly upon women writers, while the primary focus of the project at Cardiff University is Romantic-era fiction. Here in Lincoln I have begun a project to mount on the website I maintain for Studies in Romanticism at the University of Nebraska a collection of related materials that complement and supplement the work being done in these two British projects.

As part of this collective scholarly project, I will ask each of you to prepare, during the course of this semester, a project that will contribute to the project and to international scholarship in British Romanticism. Your project will involve you in a hands-on example of the sort of scholarly recovery of historically neglected or marginalized texts that is at the forefront of current research and scholarship in Romantics studies. Rather than being simply another conventional "course paper" (of which you have written many in your career) your project will contribute immediately meaningfully to this dynamic textual scholarship that is being carried on around the world. To make this happen, I will ask you to submit your completed project both in conventional paper form and in an electronic format so that I can mount it on our Romanticism website. Unless you tell me not to do so, I will publish your project with your name attached, so that you will finish this course not only with a greater knowledge of Romantic-era poetry, but also with an electronic publication to your credit.

To access the section of the Romanticism at the University of Nebraska webiste where your contribution will appear, click here.

Project Directions

For your project, you should plan to work from one of two sources:
     * The Corvey Collection, or
     * The British Women Romantic Poets Project (see also below)
I would like you to choose one complete volume of poetry from either the Corvey Collection or from the British Romantic Women's Poetry Project. The Corvey Collection includes volumes of poetry published primarily after 1819, so if you wish to work on an earlier volume, you should turn to the British Women Romantic Poets project, which you can access on-line. This electronic archive, which has been created and is maintained at the University of California, Davis, is an important source for on-line texts of poetry by British women from the Romantic period.

I will furnish you with bibliographical lists for the volumes of poetry in the Corvey Collection. Most of these are largely "unknown" in contemporary scholarship because of the artificially selective (and exclusive) nature of the "canon" of historically "accepted" poets and writings. The same is true of the volumes in the British Women Romantic Poets project, although some of these women (and their works) have become better known in recent years as a result of ongoing recovery and reassessment projects. If you choose to work with the BWRP list, you can access the full texts on-line, which may help you more quickly get a clearer idea of the works that are available. If you work with the Corvey Collection, you will need to go to the Microforms Collection at Love Library and get the individual microfiche copies of the volumes.

One useful note about the Corvey Collection:   At the Microforms Room you can have a copy of any fiche made for 25 cents. It may soon be possible also to have the fiche scanned onto a CD-ROM disk for easy access on a computer. You can make a paper copy of the microfiche volume for yourself right in the Microforms Room. Or, alternatively, you can borrow a portable microfiche reader which you can take to your own workplace for use at your own convenience. In other words, you will have many good options.

Once you have selected a volume with which to work, first check with me for my approval; there are some authors and volumes for whom there is no need to undertake this project because they are already well known (the canonical poets and several others whose works have been recovered and widely studied in recent years) or, in some cases, because there are prohibitive problems specific to that selection. So SEE ME FIRST!!! This will save you grief later on.

Here is what you will need to do: First, read your volume carefully, taking notes as appropriate, so that you will have a good working knowledge of the volume. Then,

1. Compose a descriptive and critical essay that does the following:

2. Find and copy (i.e., transcribe) any contemporary reviews (unless there are a lot of them, in which case select six). Consult the critical volumes edited by Alvin Sullivan to find out more about the periodicals that published these contemporary reviews, so that at the end of this section of your project you can write a brief analysis of the reviews.

3. Prepare a brief biographical account of the author (c. 3 pages, double-spaced, which is about 1000 words).

4. Prepare a bibliography of other works by the author.

 

Format for your Project when you submit it (a brief example)

Luby, Catherine. The Spirit of the Lakes; or, Mucruss Abbey. a Poem in Three Cantos, with Explanatory Notes. By Miss Luby. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822. Pp. xiv + 209.

[Begin with the poet's name, in bold letters. If the poet's name is not present on the title page, or if the volume was published anonymously but has now been attributed to an author, put the author's name in square brackets (like those that begin and end this note) and then include in the bibliographical citation any mention of the author that appears on the title page, as in the example above. The page number count usually will include two sets of numbers, with small Roman numerals for "front matter" and Arabic numerals for the main body of the volume.]


Description and Analysis

The preface, among other things, offers a synopsis of the poem – without revealing its resolution. The poem itself is a long romantic tale of MacFinnan's daughter "the lovely, gentle Adeline" (ix) and "the gallant, but timid Desmond." (x) with whom she falls in love. Poor Adeline, however, is already the fiancee of "the Transalpine tyrant, Montalbo" (x), who returns to claim her, upon which, "from his touch she recoiled, at his brutal gaze she shuddered, and on the brink of an abyss too frightful to contemplate even for a moment, she threw herself into the arms of her impassioned, her adoring Desmond" (xi). They plan a secret marriage and flee into the wilderness of the Killarney Lakes, but Montalbo discovers their plan and plots Desmond's death. Adeline goes mad and near the end of Canto III commits suicide by leaping from a cliff into the lake. Montalbo, who has been watching, dives in to recover her but cannot find her in the water and is himself drowned.

The poem's three cantos are subdivided internally by roman numeral sections of varying lengths. The poem is in rhymed pentameter couplets. It is actually a pretty good read; the narrative is lively and the writing itself is comparably lively and often quite imaginative.

Following the poem (pp. 3-141) are the Notes (145-92) and then a list of subscribers (195-209), beginning prominently with "Her Royal Highness the Princess Augusta."

[Your project essay should go into considerably greater detail than this, both about the poem(s) in the volume and especially about matters of content, style, and readability. This is the section in which you would include brief extracts from the volume to illustrate your comments and to give potential readers (and actual scholars) a clearer idea of the nature of the poetry. Remember that an aesthetic analysis (Item 2) needs to focus on "beauty" -- that is, on what makes the poetry most effective and on how the poet achieves her or his most impressive and satisfying artistic effects. It can (and probably should) also account for any negative aspects of the poetry, including matters of both content and form.]


Contemporary Reviews

[In this section you will transcribe up to six reviews that appeared in the periodical (or other) press at the time the volume appeared; they usually appear within a year of the initial publication, but sometimes a bit later. Begin each of these transcriptions with a complete bibliographical citation, giving the journal's title, the relevant volume and issue numbers (including date), and all page numbers for the review itself. Then double-space and copy the complete review as it appears in the source. Some reviews will be very brief, while others may be quite extensive. Be sure to proofread carefully! If you locate more than six reviews (you probably will not!), copy only six and then list the others at the end, with full bibliographical information. To begin locating contemporary reviews, see especially the volumes edited by William Ward, listed under "Resources," below.]


Brief Biography

Here is where you will provide your brief biographical essay. At the end you should list the sources you have used, beginning that bibliography with a heading of the sort you see below.

     SOURCES

[Your biographical essay should run from 500 to 1000 words, or two to three double-spaced pages. Identify and list alphabetically as "Sources," at the end of your essay, all the sources you have used in generating the biographical sketch. You should plan to consult a minimum of three sources rather than depending upon only one. For some sources with which to begin, see "Resources," below.]


Bibliography

Luby, Catherine. Father Mathew, or, Ireland As She Is; a National Poem. Dublin: S. J. Machen, 1845.
Luby, Catherine. The Spirit of the Lakes; or, Mucruss Abbey. a Poem in Three Cantos, with Explanatory Notes. By Miss Luby. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822.

[This should contain a list, with complete bibliographical details, of all other works by your author. In most cases you will not encounter any subsequent editions of your volume, but if you do you should include them in the bibliography. If your volume did appear more than once, you should mention that fact also in your descriptive essay, since this fact may indicate something about the relative contemporary popularity of the volume or its author.]


A few selected Research Resources


Short-title Catalogue of the "Edition Corvey"

REF / PN6013 / .E35 / 1988

This is just what it says:  a short-title catalogue for the Corvey Collection. This is in the Reference section of Love Library. Because it does not identify the particular literary genres of the individual volumes, you may find it most useful for your project to consult the two bibliographies of poetry -- by women and by men -- which I have prepared for you. You can find them on line by clicking on the links below:

Bibliography of poetry by men in the Corvey Collection
Bibliography of poetry by women in the Corvey Collection

Alvin Sullivan, ed. British Literary Magazines. (Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1983-)

PN5124 / L6B74 / 1983
Vol. 1: The Augustan Age
Vol. 2: The Romantic Era
Vol. 3: The Victorian Period
Each volume has essays on individual periodicals (e. g., The British Critic, The Champion, La Belle Assemblee, The Edinburgh Review, etc.). The essays discuss the whole history of the periodical, from start to finish, and examine the roles of the editors and financial supporters, the journal's changing politics (some go back and forth between leftist and rightist positions), the journal's editorial policies and principles, it main subject interests, its intended and actual audiences, etc. Most essays also have complete bibliographical information covering the entire life of the periodical. These volumes are in the Reference section of Love Library.
This sort of resource is especially valuable in helping you interpret the reviews that you find, because those reviews are so often mere vehicles for other issues, and the Sullivan essays will help you understand what those issues were and how they figured in each journal's reviewing practices.

You will use primarily the volumes for The Romantic Period and The Augustan Age. The volume on the Augustan age includes the information about journals that began publication before the Romantic period.

William S. Ward, ed. Literary Reviews in British Periodicals, 1798-1826: A Bibliography. 3 volumes in 4 parts.

There are three volumes (Volume 2 is in two parts):
Vol. 1: 1789-1797;    REF / PR442 / W347x
Vol. 2: 1798-1820;    REF / PR442 / W348x
Vol. 3: 1820-1826;    REF / PR442 / W349x

Ward scoured the contemporary periodical press in an effort to identify and locate every review or other mention of literary works published in Great Britain in the period spanned by 1789-1826. He did not in fact locate every one, but he seems to have gotten very nearly all of them. The volumes are arranged alphabetically by author, and under each author by work. These volumes are all in the reference section of Love Library; because they do not circulate, you should be able to find them at any time (look in the PR section in the link area). The entries list the name of the reviewing periodical, with complete bibliographical information (volume, year, page numbers, etc.). With these entries in hand you can go to the Microforms Room, where the Microforms card catalogue (or a helpful staff person) will lead you to the correct roll of microfilm (or, occasionally, a microfiche or microcard), where you can read a filmed copy of the original review. In the process you will inevitably find yourself browsing – and I guarantee that you will find much that is interesting, fascinating, eye-opening, and often a bit shocking. What we think of as "reviews" these days are often very skim milk beside the vinegar and vitriol you are likely to find in these often politically and ideologically motivated reviews.

Dictionary of National Biography (or DNB)

REF / DA28 / D4

This is an old resource; the first edition was done around 1920, and its literary judgments are often as dated as its gender politics. But the entries are done exceedingly well, and with the characteristic British care for accurate detail. The entries are for the most part detailed and inherently interesting. Because these volumes were done early in the twentieth century, they represent a variety of historical inquiry (and writing) that is not often seen in modern biographical work. This is in the Reference section of Love Library.

The Feminist companion to literature in English : women writers from the Middle Ages to the present. Ed. Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy (New Haven : Yale UP,1990)

REF / PR111 / B57 / 1990

The entries here cover all periods, but there is usually at least something on the authors from our period, and, taken together with other source materials, these brief entries can help keep you "on track" when it comes to countering the often highly gendered "slant" apparent in more traditional biographical resources. This is in the Reference section of Love Library.

The Voice of the Shuttle.

Everyone studying literature, the Humanities, and culture needs to know about this remarkable resource, which is the best place to begin any on-line research in literature and culture. Alan Liu and his team have built in an astonishing number of links to other sites, not just in Romanticism but throughout literary study -- and indeed into other disciplines as well. This vast resource is well worth surfing. You'll even find course materials for courses offered at other institutions. You'll also find a remarkable array of reference materials, from encyclopedias to map-making utilities and telephone directories. Have a look — you won't be disappointed.