English 365:

19^th-Century British Poetry and Prose

FALL 2000

Required Text: The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume Two

- Beginning page numbers for each selection are indicated in parentheses. Unless otherwise indicated, you are to read the entire selection, as well as all introductions to the authors. Many of these are excerpts rather than complete works; in these cases you should read all of the excerpt provided in the anthology.

* = turn in reading notes in class on these days

Aug 24 R:  The Earlier Romantics, 1: Robinson and Wordsworth

"The Romantics and their Contemporaries" (2)

Mary Robinson: "January, 1795" (196), "The Camp" (200), "London's Summer Morning" (203), Lyrical Tales (201), "The Haunted Beach" (201), "The Old Beggar" (204)

William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads (313, 332), "Simon Lee" (314), "We Are Seven" (317), "Lines Written in Early Spring" (318), "The Thorn" (319), "Note to The Thorn" (324), "Expostulation and Reply" (326), "The Tables Turned" (326), "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (328), "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" (332)
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Aug 29 T:  The Earlier Romantics, 2: Smith, William and Dorothy Wordsworth

Charlotte Smith: "To Melancholy" (362), "Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex" (363), "On being cautioned against walking on a headland overlooking the sea" (363)

William Wordsworth: "Michael" (343), "The world is too much with us" (360), "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802" (360), "London, 1802" (361), "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (433), "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" (434)

Dorothy Wordsworth: "Address to a Child" (453), "The Grasmere Journals" (462)

Aug 31 R:  The Earlier Romantics, 3: Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Sonnet to the River Otter" (478), "The Eolian Harp" (478), "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" (480), "Kubla Khan" (501)

Sep 1 F:  Last day to withdraw from this course without a "W" on your permanent record
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Sep 5 T:  Coleridge, concluded

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, Part 1" (482), "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner [1817] (484)

George Gordon, Lord Byron: Don Juan, Canto 1 (569) and excerpt from Canto 2 (616)
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Sep 12 T:  The Younger Romantics, 1: Poetry, Politics, and Social Responsibility

Percy Bysshe Shelley: "To Wordsworth" (653), "Mont Blanc" (653), "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (657), "Ozymandias" (659), "England in 1819" (660),"To a Sky-Lark" (672)

Sep 14 R:  The Younger Romantics, 2

Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Ode to the West Wind" (660), selection from A Defence of Poetry (695)
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Frankenstein (811)

Read first: selections from John Milton (941), William Godwin ( 948), Byron (948), Lady Caroline Lamb (950), William Hazlitt (954), Percy Bysshe Shelley (955)

Sep 21 R:  Frankenstein, continued

In 1823 the first dramatic version of Frankenstein, by Richard Brinsley Peake, appeared in London under the title, Presumption; or; The Fate of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley saw the production in London and seems to have enjoyed it. The play was revised in the following years. To see the full, combined script of Presumption, click on the link.

Sep 26 T:   Frankenstein, concluded

Sep 28R:  The Younger Romantics, 3: Keats and Hemans

John Keats: "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (748), "Sonnet: When I have fears" (758), "The Eve of St. Agnes" (758) "Ode to a Nightingale" (773), "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (775), "To Autumn" (779)
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Oct 3 T:  Directions of later Romanticism: Keats and Hemans, concluded

Felicia Hemans: "The Wife of Asdrubal" (707), "Evening Prayer, at a Girls' School" (713), "Casabianca" (714), Records of Woman (716), "The Bride of the Greek Isles" (716), "Properzia Rossi" (721), "The Homes of England" (728), "The Graves of a Household" (729)

Oct 5 R:  Midterm Examination
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"The Victorian Age" (1032)
Thomas Carlyle: Past and Present (1082; all selections)
Parliamentary Papers: (1100; both selections)

Oct 12 R:  The Victorian Individual

John Stuart Mill: On Liberty (1121; both selections); The Subjection of Women (1132)
Charles Darwin: "The Descent of Man, Chapter 21: General Summary and Conclusion" (1298)

* Oct 19 R:  19^th-century British visual art
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Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

Oct 26 R:  A Christmas Carol, continued; see also "Dickens and Christmas"
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Oct 31 T:  Victorian Poetry, 1: Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: "Mariana" (1187), "The Lady of Shallot" (1189), "Ulysses" (1198), "Tithonus" (1200), "Break, Break, Break" (1201), "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1243), "Crossing the Bar" (1281)

Nov 2 R:  Tennyson, continued

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: selections from In Memoriam, A. H. H. (1214: specific sections will be assigned in class)
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Robert Browning: "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" (1349), "My Last Duchess" (1351), "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" (1354), "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church" (1355), "Love Among the Ruins" (1360), "Fra Lippo Lippi" (1367)

Nov 9 R: Victorian Poetry,3: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese (1155; all selections), Prologue to "A Curse for a Nation" (1182), "A Musical Instrument" (1183), "The Best Thing in the World" (1184)
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Frances Power Cobbe (1602), Sarah Stickney Ellis (1607), Caroline Norton (1614), Thomas Hughes (1616), Harriet Martineau (1618), Isabella Beeton (1621), Queen Victoria (1623)
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* Nov 21 T:  George Eliot and Shorter Victorian Fiction

George Eliot: "Brother Jacob" (1522)

Algernon Charles Swinburne: "The Leper" (1746), "Hymn to Proserpine" (1752), "A Forsaken Garden" (1755)

Nov 30 R:  Aesthetes and Decadents, 2

Walter Pater: The Renaissance, Preface (1759) and Conclusion (1763)

Oscar Wilde: "Impression du Matin" (1856), "The Harlot's House" (1857), "Symphony in Yellow" (1858), selection from The Decay of Lying (1858), Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1881)
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Dec 5 T:  A week of review, reconsideration, some tentative conclusions, and a look ahead

Course Portfolio due IN CLASS today

DEC 7 R:  Discussion concludes, as does the course
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Final Examination:   10:00 - 12:00 noon Wednesday, 13 December