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.

Tentative Schedule

Numbers preceded by an asterisk (*) indicate page numbers in Ashfield, Romantic Women Poets, 1770-1838
Other parenthetical numbers indicate pages in Mellor and Matlak, British Literature, 1780-1830.

Aug 26   Introductory matters: The Romantic period in history and literature: critical perspectives

Reading: Wordsworth: "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (handout); Smith: "Written in the Church-yard at Middleton in Sussex" (handout)

Internet Resources:
The Romantic Chronology: a year-by-year chronolgy of history, culture, and everyday life.
The Regency Fashion Page: a multi-level website with everything from men's and women's clothing to literature and popular culture, from the 1790s to the 1820s.
English Culture, 1660-1830 (links relating to business, clubs, societies, periodicals customs, games, new plants, foods, and people of the period).
Here is a link to a wonderful website on the history of Britain during the age of George III (1760-1820).
And here is Jack Lynch's resource page for studies and scholarship in Romanticism, including calls for papers.
And Laura Mandell's resource page for on-line materials, including electronic texts.
__________

Sep 2    The Romantic who seems not to fit: William Blake and the complications of defining terms

 — The Joseph Johnson circle: radicalism and Romanticism -- the concept of literary communities

Reading: Blake: all the selections from Songs of Innocence (277-84) and Songs of Experience (299-304); Visions of the Daughters of Albion (294); Wollstonecraft: from Vindication of the Rights of Woman (371); Macaulay: from Letters on Education (34); Hays: from Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women (38); Polwhele: from The Unsex'd Females (42)

Additional reading: Burke: from Reflections on the Revolution in France (13); Wollstonecraft: from A Vindication of the Rights of Men (20); Paine: from The Rights of Man (25); Godwin: from Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness (90)

Internet Resources:
For access to on-line copies of Blake's illuminated poetry, his separate paintings and drawings, and other resources, click here (The William Blake Archive).
A Mary Wollstonecraft information page.
A Mary Hays website.
For the full text of Richard Polwhele's the Unsex'd Females, click here.
A link to an Edmund Burke page, with a link in it to the full text of Reflections on the Revolution in France.
An excellent website for William Godwin, including the full text of Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness.
A Catherine Sawbridge Macaulay page.
Adriana Craciun's excellent and extensive webiste devoted to women writers of the Romantic period.

Sep 3 F Last day to drop this course without it appearing on your permanent record. After today a "W" will appear on your record if you drop the course.
__________

Sep 9    Politics and poetry during the revolutionary period

— Romantic poetry in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution

Reading: Barbauld: "On the Expected General Rising of the French Nation in 1792" (*16), selection from Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (171); Seward: "To France on her Present Exertions" (*3); Robinson: from "The Progress of Liberty" (349), "Sonnet: To Liberty" (*125); Smith: The Emigrants (231); Williams: "To Dr. Moore, in Answer to a Poetical Epistle" (*74); Coleridge: "Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement" (693), "Fears in Solitude" (694); Alderson [Opie]: "Ode on the Present Times, 27th January 1795" (*150)

— Romanticism and the poetry of social conscience

Reading: Barbauld: "The Rights of Woman" (186); More: Slavery, A Poem (206); "Patient Joe; or, The Newcastle Collier" (216); Cowper: "The Negro's Complaint" (62), "Pity for Poor Africans" (63); Robinson: "The Old Beggar" (350), "Stanzas ['In this vain busy world']" (*126); Wordsworth: "Michael, a Pastoral Poem" (586), selection from letter to Charles James Fox (592); Owenson: "The Irish Harp" (809)

Additional reading: Marcet: from Conversations on Political Economy (99); Cobbett: Cobbett's Poor Man's Friend (102)

Internet Resources:
The excellent Anna Laetitia Barbauld website.
For the full text of Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation, click here.
Here is a Mary Robinson page that begins with a bibliography and includesd links to full texts of several works.
Charlotte Smith biography and links. Another Charlotte Smith site.
Here is the Charlotte Smith electronic text site at UNL.
A Helen Maria Williams page.
This will take you to an Amelia Alderson Opie home page.
The Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) website.
Here is a good biography of William Cobbett, "The Poor Man's Friend." And another with good links to other contextual materials.

__________

Sep 16     The Romantic "collection" Lyrical Ballads (1798) and Lyrical Tales (1800)

Reading: Wordsworth: "We Are Seven" (566), "The Thorn" (567), "Simon Lee" (564), "Lines Written in Early Spring" (567), "Expostulation and Reply" (571), "The Tables Turned" (571), "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" (571), selection from the 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads (573)
Reading: Robinson: "All Alone" (320), "The Poor, Singing Dame" (322), "The Haunted Beach" (323), "Deborah's Parrot" (324), "The Alien Boy" (326), "The Old Beggar" (350)

Additional reading: Coleridge: from Biographia Literaria, "Lyrical Ballads and Preface; Wordsworth" (748), "Imagination" (749), "Poetic Language" (753); Hazlitt: from Lectures on the English Poets: from "On Poetry in General" (149), from Table Talk: from "On Genius and Common Sense: The Same Subject Continued" (150)

Internet Resources:
A starting point for Mary Robinson.
For an excellent, interactive full text of all editions of Lyricals Ballads, with comments and apparatus, click here.
Here are some modern views of the ruins of Tintern Abbey.
And here is a hypertext biography of William Wordsworth. And here are some images of William Wordsworth.
The Project Gutenberg full text of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria.
A William Hazlitt page, with links.

__________

Sep 23    The Romantic Sonnet, I

Reading: Seward: "‘By Derwent's rapid streams as oft I strayed'"(*1), "An Evening in November"(*1), "Autumn"(*2), "To Colebrooke Dale"(*2), "To the Poppy"(*3), "‘On the damp margin of the sea-beat shore"(*3); Smith: "Sonnet I ['The partial Muse']" (227), "Sonnet XXVII ['Sighing I see yon little troop at play']" (227), "To Fortitude" (227), "Sonnet XLIII ["The unhappy exile']" (227), "To Fancy" (228), "To Dependence" (228), "Written September 1791 . . ." (228), "On being cautioned against walking on an headland overlooked by the sea, because it was frequented by a lunatic" (229), "The Winter Night" (229), "To the Muse" (229), "To the South Downs" (*34), Composed During a Walk on the Downs, in November 1787" (*35), "Sonnet ['The fairest flowers are gone!']" (*36), "Sonnet ['Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore']" (*36); Williams: "To Love" (*76), "To Disappointment" (*76), "To Simplicity" (*77), "To the Strawberry" (*77), "To the Torrid Zone" (*78), "To the Calbassia Tree" (*78), "To the White Bird of the Tropic" (*79)

— Wordsworth and the Sonnet

Reading: Wordsworth: "Prefatory Sonnet" (595), "With Ships the Sea Was Sprinkled Far and Nigh" (595), "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1803" (596), "The World Is Too Much with Us; Late and Soon" (596), "It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free" (596), "Composed by the Sea-Side, near Calais, August, 1802" (597), "Calais, August, 1802" (597), "I Griev'd for Buonaparte" (597), "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic" (597) "To Toussaint L'ouverture" (598), "September 1st, 1802" (598), "Written in London, September, 1802" (598), "London, 1802" (590), "It Is Not to Be Thought" (590), "Surprised by Joy — Impatient as the Wind" (622)

Additional reading: Smith: from The Theory of Moral Sentiments (141); Burke: from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (134)

Internet Resources:

An Anna Seward link.
Here is an electronic edition of the complete text of Charlotte Smith's Elegiac Sonnets 7th edition, as it appears in the UNL Etext Center's in-progress edition of The Works of Charlotte Smith.
A link to an Edmund Burke page with his works on Aesthetics (and other topics), including the full text of A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757).
Full text of Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).
A Dictionary of Sensibility, with definitions and links, from the University of Virginia

__________

Sep 30    A catching-up session
__________

Oct 7    Looking at the world: public world / private world

Reading: Robinson: "Winkfield Plain ["The Camp"]" (*137); Alderson [Opie]: "Stanzas Written under Aeolus's Harp" (*151); Coleridge: "The Eolian Harp" (760), "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" (709), "Kubla Khan" (729), "Dejection: An Ode" (711); Wordsworth: "Ode: [Intimations of Immortality]" (603), "Nutting" (585); Mitford: "Nutting" (handout); Clare: "Nutting" (1249)

— Some acquaintances: real and literary life as subject and object

Reading: Barbauld: "To Mr. [S. T.] C[oleridge]" (189); Hemans: "To the Poet Wordsworth" (1226); Robinson: "To the Poet Coleridge" (352); Shelley: "To Wordsworth" (1062)

Internet Resources:
A site for Coleridge and his times and contexts.
What is an Aeolien Harp? Check here.
Want to know what kind of tree Coleridge meant by a "lime-tree"? Click here.
The Project Gutenberg full text of Mary Russell Mitford's Our Village; "Nutting" is a chapter near the end.
The John Clare page; an excellent portal to Clare and his work.
A site devoted to Romantic-era Natural History, exploring relationships among the arts and the natural world before Charles Darwin.

__________

Oct 14    International Conference on Romanticism – no class

Oct 15 F    Last day to change your registration to or from "Pass / No Pass" status
__________

Oct 21    Looking at the world: family and children

For an excellent introduction to children, childhood, and families in the later 18th century and the Romantic period, visit the illustrated exhibition called
The New Child: British Art and the Origins of Modern Childhood

Reading: Coleridge: "Frost at Midnight" (697); Robinson: "Ode Inscribed to the Infant Son of S. T. Coleridge, Esq." (*133), "Ode to My Beloved Daughter" (*119); Wordsworth: "Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known" (582), "Song [She dwelt among th' untrodden ways]" (582), "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" (582), "Lucy Gray" (583), "Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower" (586); Dorothy Wordsworth: "Irregular Verses" (667); Alderson [Opie]: "The Orphan Boy's Tale" (557); Jane Taylor: "The Star" (839), "A Pair" (841)

— Looking at the world: Romantic poetry, humor, and sentiment

Reading: Barbauld: "Washing Day" (187), "To A Little Invisible Being who is Expected Soon to Become Visible" (187); Robinson: "January, 1795" (348), "A London Summer Morning" (347); Smith: "Thirty-Eight" (230); Baillie: "London"(*100); Williams: "Sonnet: To the Curlew" (*77); Jane Taylor: "Recreation" (844), "A Town"(*171)

Internet Resources:
Dorothy Wordsworth
Here is a link to views of Dove Cottage, the home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth for many years.

__________

Oct 28    The Byron Phenomenon

— Byron, the popular lyric, and the poetry of extravagance

Reading: Byron: "When We Two Parted" (900), "Fare Thee Well" (900), "Sonnet on Chillon" (918), "Darkness" (919), "Prometheus" (920), "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year" (1046)

— The Byronic hero

Reading: all selections from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (887); Don Juan, canto I (954), and selections from Cantos II (980), III (999), IV (1010)

Internet Resources:
A good place to start with Byron.
For the full text of Don Juan, click here.

__________

Nov 4    Byron's female rivals, I: Felicia Hemans

Reading: Hemans: "The Treasures of the Deep" (*179), "The Wife of Asdrubal" (1188), "The Bride of the Greek Isle" (1229), "Madeline: A Domestic Tale" (1239), "Properzia Rossi" (1232), "The Homes of England" (1241), "The Image in Lava" (1242), "The Spirit's Mysteries" (*189), "The Last Song of Sappho" (*193)

Byron's Femals rivals, II: "The Byron of our Poetesses": "L. E. L."

Reading: Landon: "Revenge" (1394), Erinna (1381), "Love's Last Lesson" (1386), "Felicia Hemans" (1401), "The Factory" (*213), "Night at Sea" (222)

Internet Resources:
Felicia Hemans starting-point.
Here is an 1863 illustration for Hemans' "Evening Prayer at a Girls' School"
For the full text of Hemans' Records of Woman (1828), click here.
The Letitia Elizabeth Landon site; a good starting-point for "L. E. L."; another website, with a critical biography and links to other sites.

__________

Nov 11    The Regency milieu and the "Second Generation Romantics": "mad Shelley"

Reading: Shelley: "Mont Blanc" (1063), "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (1065), Alastor (1054)
"Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples" (1149), selection from A Defence of Poetry (1167), "Lines Written among the Euganean Hills" (handout)

Internet Resources:
You'll find an excellent starting-point for anything relating to Percy Bysshe Shelley here.
For the full text of A Defence of Poetry, click here.

Nov 12 F Last day to withdraw from this course and still have a "W" appear on your permanent record instead of a conventional letter grade.
__________

Nov 18    Poetry and politics in the Regency world

Reading: Barbauld: Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (181); Shelley: "Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte" (1062), "Song to the Men of England" (1166), "Sonnet: England in 1819" (1166), "Ode to the West Wind" (1101)

—A memorial to a poet, and more

Reading: Shelley: Adonais

Internet Resources:
Starting-point for John Keats.

__________

Nov 25 R — Thanksgiving holiday – no class
__________

Dec 2    The Romantic Sonnet, II

Reading: Tighe: "Written at Scarborough" (*159), "Sonnet ['For me would Fancy now her chaplet twine']" (*159), "Sonnet ['Ye dear associates of my gayer hours']" (*160); Keats: "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1257), "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles" (1261), "When I have fears that I may cease to be" (1312) "Bright star, would I were as stedfast as thou art" (1311) Keats and later Romanticism

— A brace of birds: how shared subject matter reinscribes the Romantic poetic community

Reading: Smith: "Sonnet: to a Nightingale" (*34), "Sonnet: On the Departure of the Nightingale" (*35); Hunter: "To the Nightingale" (*66); Coleridge: "The Nightingale"(707); Robinson: "Ode: To the Nightingale" (*113); Keats: "Ode to a Nightingale" (1296); Shelley: "To a Skylark" (1138)

Additional reading: Lockhart:: "Cockney School of Poetry" (159)

Internet Resources:
For images of Keats and of his letters and manuscripts, go here.
Want to hear a nightingale? Click here.

__________

Dec 9    Art and the artifice of life

Reading: Porter: "Address to Poesy" (*155); Baillie: "Lines to a Teapot" (handout); Keats: "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1297), "Ode on Indolence" (1312), "Ode on Melancholy" (1298); Wallace Stevens: "Anecdote of the Jar" (handout); Hemans: "Woman and Fame" (1247); Landon: "[Influence of Poetry]" (*215)

— When it all comes to an end

Reading: Keats: "When I Have Fears" (1312), "To Autumn" (1308); Tighe: "Sonnet ['Ye dear associates of my gayer hours']" (*160); Landon: "St. George's Hospital, Hyde-Park Corner" (*210), "[Intimations of Previous Existence]" (*212); Clare: "I Am" (1250)

Internet Resources:

__________

Final Examination: Thursday evening, 16 December, at regular class hour