English 931: English Authors after 1800
Fall 2010
William Wordsworth
Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews; 472-1806
office: 10-12 TR, and by appointment
Email Stephen Behrendt
Tentative Schedule
See the Information Sheet for notes about texts for the assigned readings. I will distribute lists of particular titles to guide your reading of the Poems, in Two Volumes of 1807.
For some of our sessions I have indicated suggestions for further reading. These are “background materials” that you might find interesting or helpful; all are relevant to Wordsworth and the context of his times. I have provided short citations only; you can find the works through the IRIS interface at Love Library, through standard bibliographical sources, and from some sites on the World Wide Web. I strongly encourage you to sample as widely among these materials as your time permits. I will probably ask people to prepare reporst on most of these materials and topics.
Aug 24 -- Introduction to the nature, scope, and substance of our work:
Background(s): history, cultural history, literary history, theory, and Wordsworth’s reputation
“Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress”
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (2 versions)
Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads
Aug 31 -- Wordsworth’s early life and experiences; the beginnings; the poet in search of himself and his voice
An Evening Walk, Descriptive Sketches
Background Reading:
William Cowper, The Task (1785)
Edmund Burke,(1790) Reflections on the Revolution in France
Thomas Paine,The Rights of Man(1791-92)
Wordsworth, Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (in The Prose of Wordsworth)
-- full text at Google Books
Sep 3 (F) Last day to withdraw from this symposium without a “W” on your permanent record
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Sep 7 -- The development of a social consciousness
“The Ruined Cottage,” “Salisbury Plain”
Background Reading:
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
-- available on ECCO
-- full text at EText Center, University of Virginia
Robert Hartley, Observations on Man (1749)
-- available on ECCO
-- electronic text, multiple formats
Anna Letitia Barbauld, Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793)
John Thelwall, The Rights of Nature against the Usurpation of Establishments (1796)
-- available on ECCO
-- full text at Google Books
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Sep 14 -- Lyrical Ballads, 1: The poems and their contexts
For this week’s required reading, see:
“Poems in the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads in the order in which they were printed”
Background Reading:
Bishop Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient Poetry (1765): here are 4 sample poems
-- complete collection available on ECCO
-- 19th-century edition, complete, multiple formats
Robert Burns, Poems (1786/1787): samples and links
-- complete volumes available on ECCO
Robert Southey, Joan of Arc (1796); Poems (1797)
-- available on ECCO
Mayo, Robert. “The Contemporaneity of the Lyrical Ballads,” PMLA 69 (1954), 486-522.
-- full text available on JSTOR
Romanticism on the Net 9 (February 1998): special issue: “Lyrical Ballads 1798-1998”
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Sep 21 -- Lyrical Ballads, 2: The poems and their reception
Background Reading:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria: Chapters IV, XIV, XVII-XX
-- full text of Biographia Literaria at Project Gutenberg
Report(s):
Contemporary Reviews of Lyrical Ballads (1798)
Wordsworth and Modern/Contemporary Poetry
Wordsworth, the Romantics, and the Origins of Ecocriticism
_____
Sep 28 -- Taking stock of things: formulating a life in poetry
The two-part Prelude of 1799 (Norton text)
Background Reading:
James Montgomery, The Wanderer of Switzerland, and Other Poems (esp. "A Field Flower")
-- full text, in multiple formats
Dorothy Wordsworth, Alfoxden Journal (1798), Grasmere Journal (1800)
-- full text of both journals, in multiple formats
Jacqueline Labbé, "Revisting the Egotistical Sublime: Smith, Wordsworth, an dthe Romantic Dramatic Monologue." In Fellow Romantics: Male and Female British Writers, 1790-1835. Ed. Beth Lau. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009; pp. 17-38.
Stephen C. Behrendt, "'I Am Not What I Am': Staged Presence in Romantic Autobiography." In Romantic Autobiography in England. Ed. Eugene Stelzig . Farnham: Ashgate, 2009; pp. 145-60.
Report(s):
Thomas DeQuincey. Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets (Wordsworth) and other sources
_____
Oct 5 -- Lyrical Ballads, 3: The dynamics of the Second Edition (1800)
For this week’s reading, see:
“Poems in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads in the order in which they were printed”
Background Reading:
Mary Robinson, Lyrical Tales (1800)
-- full text from British Women Romantic Poets project at UC, Davis; also on Blackboard in "Course Documents"
Stuart Curran, "Mary Robinson’s Lyrical tales in Context." In Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837 . Ed. Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1994; pp. 17-35.
-- full text from Google Books
Judith Pascoe, “Mary Robinson and the Literary Marketplace.” In Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley. Hanover, NH: U of New England P, 1995; pp. 252-68.
-- full text from Google Books
Report(s):
Mary Robinson, Lyrical Tales (1800)
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Oct 12 -- The Prelude takes shape: (re)formulating a life in/as poetry
The Prelude (1805), 1 (Norton text)
Report(s):
Dorothy Wordsworth on Her Brother William
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Oct 19 -- Fall Break – No Meeting
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Oct 26 -- The Prelude (1805), 2: further thoughts on art and life
Report(s):
Percy Bysshe Shelley on Wordsworth
John Keats on Wordsworth
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Nov 2 -- Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), 1: Wordsworth’s most ambitious early collection
-- see handout for titles
Report(s):
William Hazlitt: On the Living Poets [Wordsworth] and other sources
-- full text of Lectures on the English Poets, from Project Gutenberg
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Nov 9 -- Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), 2 : Wordsworth and the Sonnet
-- see handout for titles
Background Reading:
Charlotte Smith, Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Poems (1784-1797)
-- most editions available on ECCO
William Lisle Bowles, Fourteen Sonnets (1789)
-- available on ECCO
Stephen C. Behrendt,“Placing the Places in Wordsworth’s 1802 Sonnets.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 35 (Autumn 1995): 641-67.
-- available through JSTOR
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Nov 16 -- The turning point for so many: The Excursion
The Excursion
Background Reading:
Wordsworth, On the Convention of Cintra (1809)
-- full text at Open Library, in multiple formats
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Nov 23 -- Peter Bell
Background Reading:
John Hamilton Reynolds, Peter Bell
-- partial text (without the prose preface)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Peter Bell the Third
-- full text from Project Gutenberg
Stephen C. Behrendt, "'Peter Bell the Third': Contempt and Poetic Transfiguration." In The Unfamiliar Shelley. Ed. Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009; pp. 101-18.
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Nov 30 -- Individual Presentations, 1
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Dec 7 -- Individual Presentations, 2
Course evaluations
Conclusions and celebrations