tentative Schedule of required readings and activities
Texts:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volumes D (The Romantic Period) and E (The Victorian Age)
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Beginning page numbers for each selection are indicated in parentheses. Unless otherwise indicated, you are to read the entire selection. Many of these are excerpts rather than complete works; in these cases you should read all of the excerpt provided in the anthology.
ALSO: Be sure to read the introductions to the individual authors! You’ll get a lot of good background that will help you with the reading selections.
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Aug 24 M Introduction to the period, the culture, and the expectations for this course
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Aug 26 W Read Introduction (3-30)
Introduction (112-15); Songs of Innocence: “Introduction” (118), “The Ecchoing Green” (119), “The Lamb” (120), “The Little Black Boy” (120), “The Chimney Sweeper” (121), “Holy Thursday” (122), “Nurse’s Song” (123); Songs of Experience: “Introduction” (125), “Earth’s Answer” (125), “The Clod & the Pebble” (127), “Holy Thursday” (127), “The Chimney Sweeper” (128), “Nurse’s Song” (128), “The Tyger” (129), “London” (132), “A Poison Tree” (134)
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28 F Blake: Songs, continued
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31 M Anna Letitia Barbauld:
Introduction (39-40), “A Summer Evening’s Meditation” (43), “The Rights of Woman” (48), “Washing Day” (50)
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Sep 2 W Charlotte Smith:
Introduction (53-54) , “Written at the Close of Spring” (54), “To Sleep” (54), “To Night” (55), “Written in the Church-Yard as Middleton in Sussex” (55), “On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic” (56), “The Sea-View” (56)
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Sep 4 F: Mary Robinson:
Introduction (77-79), “January, 1795” (79), “London’s Summer Morning” (81), “The Poor Singing Dame” (81), “The Haunted Beach” (83)
Last day to withdraw from this course without a “W” on your permanent record
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7 M Labor Day holiday – no class
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9 W William Wordsworth:
Introduction (270-72) , Lyrical Ballads: “Good Blake and Harry Gill” (272), “Simon Lee” (275),“We Are Seven” (278), “Lines Written in Early Spring” (280), “Expostulation and Reply” (280), “The Tables Turned” (281), “The Thorn” (282), “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (288), Preface to Lyrical Ballads excerpts (292-304)
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11 F Wordsworth sonnets:
“Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” (344), “It is a Beauteous Evening” (345), “To Toussaint l’Ouverture” (345), “September 1st, 1802” (346), “London, 1802” (346), “The world is too much with us” (347), “Surprised by joy” (347), “Mutability” (348), “Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways” (348)
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Sep 14 M Wordsworth:
“Strange fits of passion have I known” (305), “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” (305), “Three years she grew” (306), “A slumber did my spirit seal” (307), “I travelled among unknown men” (307), “Resolution and Independence” (330), “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (334), “The Ruined Cottage” (309)
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16 W Wordsworth: “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” (335)
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18 F: finish Wordsworth
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21 M Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Introduction (437-39) “The Eolian Harp” (439), “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”
(441), “To Wordsworth” (484), from Biographia Literaria: “Mr. Wordsworth’s Earlier Poems” (488), “On fancy and imagination” (490), “On the imagination, or esemplastic power” (491)
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23 W Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (443)
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25 F Coleridge: “Frost at Midnight” (477), “Dejection: An Ode” (479), “Kubla Khan”
Mary Robinson: “To the Poet Coleridge” (86)
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28 M George Gordon, Lord Byron:
Introduction (612-16), “Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos” (616), “She Walks in Beauty” (617), “Darkness” (618), “So, we’ll go no more a roving” (620)
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30 W Byron: Don Juan, Canto I (673-704)
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Oct 2 F Percy Bysshe Shelley:
Introduction (748-51), “To Wordsworth” (752), “Mont Blanc” (770), “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” (773), “Ozymandias” (776)
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5 M Shelley:
“Stanzas Written in Dejection – December 1818, near Naples” (778), “England in 1819” “To Sidmouth and Castlereagh” (790), “Ode to the West Wind” (791)
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7 W Shelley: “Adonais” (839); excerpt from A Defence of Poetry (856-69)
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9 F John Keats:
Introduction (901-03), “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (904), “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” (906), “When I have fears that I may cease to be” (911); “The Eve of St. Agnes” (912),“Ode to Psyche” (925), “Ode on Melancholy” (931), “Ode on Indolence” (933)
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12 M Keats: “To Autumn” (951), “Ode to a Nightingale” (927), “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (930)
Midterm Examination due in class (out-of-class essay)
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14 W British Romanticism and the Visual Arts
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16 F Final thoughts about British Romanticism
Last day to change registration to or from “Pass / No Pass”
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19-20 Fall Break – no class
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21 W Introduction to the Victorian Period:
Introduction to The Victorian Age (1017-41)
– The Victorian Individual –
Thomas Carlyle: Introduction (1044-48),from Past and Present: “Democracy” (1067), “Captains of Industry” (1072)
John Stuart Mill: Introduction (1086-88), from On Liberty: “Of Individuality as One of the Elements of Well-Being (1095), from The Subjection of Women: excerpt from Chapter 1 (1105)
Sarah Stickney Ellis: “The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits (1610)
Coventry Patmore: from “The Angel in the House”: “The Paragon” (1613)
Mona Caird: from Marriage (1630)
Walter Besant: from “The Queen’s Reign”: “The Transformation of Women’s Status between 1837 and 1897" (1634)
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23 F 19th-century British visual art: the Victorian era
John Ruskin: Introduction (1335-37), from Modern Painters: “A Definition of Greatness in Art” (1338), “The Slave Ship” (1339)
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Oct 26 M Charles Dickens and Victorian Fiction
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
background and study questions for A Christmas Carol
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28 W Dickens, A Christmas Carol, continued; see also
The Children’s Employment Commission: from “First Report” (1587)
Friedrich Engels: from “The Great Towns” (1589)
Charles Kingsley: from Alton Locke (1597)
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30 F Dickens, A Christmas Carol, continued
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Nov 2 M Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
Introduction (1156-59), “Mariana” (1159), “The Lady of Shalott” (1161), “Break, Break, Break” (1174), “Locksley Hall” (1177), “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1235), “Crossing the Bar” (1259)
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4 W Tennyson: “Ulysses” (1170), “Tithonus” (1172)
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6 F Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Introduction (1123-24), “The Cry of the Children “ (1124), from Sonnets from the Portuguese: “Say over again” (1129), “When our two souls” (1129), “The first time” (1130), “How do I love thee?” (1130), “Mother and Poet” (1152)
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9 M Robert Browning:
Introduction (1275-78), “Porphyria’s Lover” (1278), “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” (1280), “My Last Duchess,”(1282), “The Lost Leader” (1283)
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11 W Robert Browning: “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church” (1286)
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13 F Robert Browning: “Fra Lippo Lippi” (1300), “Andrea del Sarto” (1309)
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16 M Dante Gabriel Rossetti:
Introduction (1471-72), “The Blessed Damozel” (1472), “My Sister’s Sleep” (1476), “Jenny” (1478), “The Sonnet” (1487), “Nuptial Sleep” (1487), “Silent Noon” (1488), “Soul’s Beauty” (1488), “Body’s Beauty” (1488)
John Ruskin: excerpt from “Pre-Raphaelitism” (1468)
William Michael Rossetti: “The Pre-Raphaelite Manifesto” (1470)
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18 W Pre-Raphaelite visual art
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20 F Christina Rossetti:
Song: “She sat and sang alway” (1490), Song: “When I am dead, my dearest” (1490), “After Death” (1491), “Dead before Death” (1491), “Cobwebs” (1492), “In an Artist’s Studio” (1493), “No, Thank You, John’” (1508), “Promises Like Pie-Crust” (1509), sonnet from Later Life (1510), “Sleeping at Last” (1511)
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23 M a day for catching up
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25-29 Thanksgiving Break – no class
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30 M Later Victorian culture
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Dec 2 W Walter Pater:
Introduction (1537-38), excerpts from Studies in the History of the Renaissance: “Preface” (1538), “LaGioconda” (1542). “Conclusion” (1543)
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4 F Oscar Wilde:
Introduction (1720-21), “Impression du Matin” (1722), “The Harlot’s House” (1722), excerpt from The Critic as Artist (1723), Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1732)
read also “Late Victorians” (1668-71)
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7 M Rudyard Kipling:
Introduction (1851-53), “Danny Deever” (1877), “The Widow at Windsor” (1878), “Recessional” (1879), “The White Man’s Burden” (1880)
9 W The close of the Victorian era
11 F Final matters. Discussion concludes, as does the course
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