English 331: Spring 2018
British Women Poets of theRomantic Period
Stephen Behrendt
319 Andrews; 472-1806
office: 2:00 - 3:30 TR, 10:00 - 12:00 W
and by appointment
email Dr. Behrendt
Required Texts:
British Women Poets of the Romantic Era. Ed. Paula R. Feldman
Additional texts will be found on line on Canvas
Tentative Schedule of Assigned Readings:
Numbers in parentheses refer to pages in Feldman, ed. British Women Poets of the Romantic Era
Items followed by “[Canvas]” will be found on the course website on Canvas
Jan 9 T Introductory matters: objectives and expectations
Canonicity, periodicity, recovery of neglected writers
Revisionist scholarship and the new landscape of British Romanticism
Texts, electronic texts, accessibility, and Romantics scholarship
Jan 11 R Getting acquainted: Behrendt, “Poetry.” from Cambridge Companion to Women’s Writing in the Romantic Period [Canvas]
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Jan 16 T Charlotte Smith: a preliminary case of authorship, authority, and influence
“The Partial Muse” (679); “Sonnet II: Written at the Close of Spring” (680); “Sonnet III: To a Nightingale” (680); “Sonnet IV: To the Moon” (681); [John Keats, “When I Have Fears” (Canvas)]; “Sonnet V: To the South Downs” (682); “Sonnet VII: On the Departure of the Nightingale” (683); “Sonnet VIII: To Spring” (684); “Sonnet XXXIX: To Night” ( 686); “Sonnet XLIV: Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex” (686); “Sonnet LXVII: On Passing over a Dreary Tract of a Country, and near the Ruins of a Deserted Chapel, during a Tempest” (687); “Sonnet LXX: On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic” (688); “The Swallow” (689)
Jan 18 R Smith: “Beachy Head” (692)
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Jan 23 T Mary Robinson: a second case, and a different sort of celebrity
“The Linnet’s Petition” (595); “Second Ode to the Nightingale” (598); “The Maniac” (602); “Stanzas Written after Successive Nights of Melancholy Dreams” (606); “Marie Antoinette’s Lamentation” (608); “London’s Summer Morning” (611); “January, 1795” (612)
— William Wordsworth, “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” [Canvas]
Jan 25 R Robinson:
“The Lascar” (614); “The Negro Girl” (623); “The Haunted Beach” (627); “The
Alien Boy” (629); “To the Poet Coleridge” (633); “The Camp” (635); “The Poet’s Garret” (636)
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” [Canvas]
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Jan 30 T Anna Letitia Barbauld:
“The Mouse’s Petition” (56); “An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley’s Study” (59); “Epistle to William Wilberforce” [Canvas]; “Tomorrow” (64); “A Summer Evening’s Meditation” (61); “Inscription for an Ice-House” (65); “To the Poor” (66); “Washing-Day” (67); “Life” (81); “The Baby-House” (82)
Feb 1 R Barbauld: Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation [Canvas]
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Feb 6 T Anna Seward:
“Sonnet IV: To Honora Sneyd, Whose Health Was Always Best in Winter” (654); “Sonnet VII (655); “Sonnet LXXI. To the Poppy” (660); “Sonnet XCV” (661); “Sonnet LXIII: To Colebrooke Dale” [Canvas]; “Colebrooke Dale” [Canvas]
Feb 8 R Helen Maria Williams:
“Sonnet to Twilight” (805); “A Song (“No riches”) (807); “Elegy on a Young Thrush” (808); “Sonnet to the Moon” (809); “To Dr. Moore, in Answer to a Poetical Epistle Written to Me by Him in Wales, September 1791” (813); “Sonnet to the Curlew” (816)”; “Sonnet to the White-Bird of the Tropic” (816); “Sonnet to the Torrid Zone” (817); “Hymn, Written among the Alps” (817); “To a Friend, Who Sent Me Flowers, When Confined by Illness” (821)
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Feb 13 T Joanna Baillie:
“Wind” (27); “Thunder” (30); “The Kitten” (33); “A Summer’s Day” [Canvas]; “A Winter’s Day” [Canvas]; “Address to a Steam-Vessel” (39); “Lines to a Teapot” (45)
— John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” [Canvas]
Feb 15 R Mary Tighe:
“On Receiving a Branch of Mezereon Which Flowered at Woodstock” (775); “Written at Scarborough, August 1799” (777); “Sonnet (“As one who late hath lost a friend adored”) (777); “Address to My Harp” (778); “Sonnet, March 1791” (779); “Sonnet (“’Tis past the cruel anguish of suspence)” (780)
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Feb 20 T Elizabeth Moody:
“To Dr. Darwin, On Reading His Loves of the Plants” (460); “”To Sleep, A Song” (463); “The Housewife; or, The Muse Learning to Ride the Great Horse Heroic” (464); “Thoughts on War and Peace” [Canvas]; “Anna’s Complaint” [Canvas]
Feb 22 R Amelia Alderson Opie:
“Ode: Written on the Opening of the Last Campaign” (529); “Stanzas Written under Aeolus’s Harp” (531); [Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Aeolean Harp” — (Canvas)], “Allen Brooke, of Windermere” (533); “An Evening Walk at Cromer” (534); “The Despairing Wanderer” (536), “Lines Written at Norwich on the First News of the Peace” [Canvas]
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Feb 27 T Anna Letitia Barbauld: Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
Mar 1 R — a day for catching up —
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Mar 6 T Poetics and Women’s Writing
Mary Wollstonecraft, “On Artificial Taste” [Canvas]
Mary Robinson, Preface to Sappho and Phaon [Canvas]
Mar 8 R Letitia Elizabeth Landon, “On the Ancient and Modern Influence in Poetry” [Canvas]
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Mar 13 T Susan Evance:
“Sonnet to Melancholy” (242); “Sonnet Written in a Ruinous Abbey” (243); “Sonnet to a Violet” (243); “Sonnet to the Clouds” (244); “Written During a Storm of Wind” (244)
Christian Milne:
“To a Lady, Who Did Me the Honour of Calling at My House” (446); “Set with a Flower Pot, Begging a Slip of Geranium” (447); “On a Lady, Who Spoke with Some Ill-Nature of the Advertisement of My Little Work in the ‘Aberdeen Journal’” (448); “To a Gentleman, Desirous of Seeing My Manuscripts” (449)
Mar 15 R Isabel Pagan:
“Account of the Author’s Lifetime” (545); “A New Love Song, with the Answer” (546); “The Answer” (547), “”On Burns and Ramsay” (548), “A Letter” (549); “The Spinning Wheel” (550), “A Love Letter” (552)
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March 18 – 25: SPRING BREAK
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Mar 20 T Catharine Quigley: [these poems are all on Canvas]
“Stanzas to a Young Lady, on Reading Bloomfield’s Poems”; “Hodge and Sue. A Pastoral”; “An Epistle from Dublin, to a Friend in the Country”; “The Broken Saucer: A Pastoral”
Mar 22 R Charlotte Caroline Richardson: “Harvest, A Poem” [Canvas]
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Mar 27 T Isabella Lickbarrow:
“Lines on the Comet” (398); “On the Fate of Newspapers” (400); “On Sleep” (404); “The Widow” (405); “Colin” (406); “Lucy” (407); “The Mountain Flower” (410); “Lady Hamilton” (411)
Mar 29 R Anna Maria Smallpiece: [these poems are all on Canvas]
“Sonnet 9 (“the tender flow’ret, nursling of the morn”)”; “Sonnet 10 (“O! why, soft sleep, do I thy aid implore?”)”; “Sonnet 27 (Not to the vulgar, not the common eye”)
Mariann Dark: [these poems are all on Canvas] “Sonnet XII: On Reading Mrs. Smith’s Sonnets”; “Sonnet XIII: On Reviewing the Preceding”
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Apr 3 T Felicia Hemans:
“The Graves of a Household” (291); “A Monarch’s Death-Bed” (294); “The Wife of Asdrubal” [Canvas]; “Evening Prayer at a Girl’s School” [Canvas]; “The Homes of England” [Canvas]
Apr 5 R Hemans:
“Gertrude, or Fidelity till Death” (295); “To Wordsworth” [Canvas]; “The Image in Lava” (301), “The Grave of a Poetess” [Canvas]; “A Parting Song” [Canvas]
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Apr 10 T Letitia Elizabeth Landon (“L. E. L.”):
“The Oak” (371); “Home” (372); “Hannibal’s Oath” (373); “The Altered River” (374); “The Factory” [Canvas]; “Lines of Life” (376); “Carrick-a-Rede, Ireland” (279); “Fountain’s Abbey” (381); “Marius at the Ruins of Carthage” (382),
Apr 12 R Landon: “The Unknown Grave” (384); “Felicia Hemans” [Canvas]; “Stanzas on the Death of Mrs. Hemans” [Canvas]
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Apr 17 T So –
What have we learned? And what have we not learned?
And how, and why did we learn what we learned?
And how, and why, did we not learn what we did not learn?
And who’s to blame???
Says who?????
Apr 19 R Romantic-era British women poets in (British) literary history, revisted
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Apr 24 T The landscape of British Romanticism as it appears (at least to some) in 2018
Conclusions, challenges, opportunities, and the way forward
Apr 26 R The “Big Finish” (sans fireworks, since we will be indoors)
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FINAL EXAM: 3:30 – 5:30; Tuesday, 1 May