ENGLISH 365:

19th-Century British Poetry and Prose

 

SPRING 2003


Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews
phone: 472-1806
office: 1230-130 TR
and by appointment

Email Stephen Behrendt

TEXT: The Longman Anthology of British Literature,
                      Second Edition, Vol. 2

 


REQUIRED READING ASSIGNMENTS


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.


Tentative Schedule of Required Readings and Activities

* = turn in reading notes in class on these days

Jan 14 T:   Introduction to the period, the culture, and the expectations for this course

Jan 16 R:   The Earlier Romantics, 1: Robinson and Wordsworth

"The Romantics and their Contemporaries" (3)
Mary Robinson: "January, 1795' (216), "The Camp" (220), "London's Summer Morning" (222), "The Haunted Beach" (221), "The Old Beggar" (223); Robinson's Letter the the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination
William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads (337), "Simon Lee" (338), "We Are Seven" (341), "Lines Written in Early Spring" (342), "The Thorn" (343), "Note to The Thorn" (348), "Expostulation and Reply" (350), "The Tables Turned" (350), "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (352), "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" (356)

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Jan 21 T:  The Earlier Romantics, 2: Charlotte Smith, William and Dorothy Wordsworth

Charlotte Smith: "To Melancholy" (50), "Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex" (51), "On being cautioned against walking on a headland overlooking the sea" (52)
William Wordsworth: "The world is too much with us" (386), "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802" (386), "London, 1802" (387), "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (453), "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" (454)
Dorothy Wordsworth: "Address to a Child" (469), "The Grasmere Journals" (478)

Jan 23 R:  The Earlier Romantics, 3: Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Sonnet to the River Otter" (522), "The Eolian Harp" (522), "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" (524), "Kubla Khan" (545)

Jan 24 F:    Last day to withdraw from this course without a "W" on your permanent record
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Jan 28 T:  Coleridge, concluded

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, Part 1" (526), "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner [1817] (528)
Mary Robinson: "To the Poet Coleridge" (225)

Jan 30 R:  A day for catching up
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Feb  4 T:  Byron

George Gordon, Lord Byron: Don Juan, Dedication (668), Canto 1 (672) and excerpt from Canto 2 (717)

Feb  6 R:  Byron, continued

George Gordon, Lord Byron: "Stanzas" ("When a man..."; 745), "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year" (746)

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* 11 T:  The Younger Romantics, 1: Poetry, Politics, and Social Responsibility

Percy Bysshe Shelley: "To Wordsworth" (754), "Mont Blanc" (754), "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (758), "Ozymandias" (760), "England in 1819" (761),"To a Sky-Lark" (773)

Feb 13 R:  The Younger Romantics, 2

Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Ode to the West Wind" (771), selection from A Defence of Poetry (800)

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Feb 18 T:   The Younger Romantics, 3 Shelley and Keats

John Keats: "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (854), "On sitting down to reading Lear once again" (864), "Sonnet: When I have fears" (865), "The Eve of St. Agnes" (865)


Feb
20 R:  Keats

John Keats: "Ode to a Nightingale" (879), "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (882), "To Autumn" (886)

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Feb 25 T:  Directions of later Romanticism: Hemans

Felicia Hemans: "The Wife of Asdrubal" (812), "Evening Prayer, at a Girls' School" (818), "Casabianca" (819), Records of Woman (820), "The Bride of the Greek Isles" (820), "Properzia Rossi" (825), "The Homes of England" (833), "The Graves of a Household" (834)

Feb 27 R:   Midterm Examination
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Mar  4 T:  Introduction to the Victorian Period

"The Victorian Age" (1008)

Mar  6 R:  The Victorians and Work

Thomas Carlyle: Past and Present (1035; all selections)
Parliamentary Papers: (1053; both selections)
Charles Dickens: from Hard Times: [Coketown] (1057)
Friedrich Engels: from The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1060); review of Carlyle's Past and Present
The Penny Magazine: a weekly magazine (1832-35) aimed at the working class

Mar 7  F:   Last day to change your grade status to or from "Pass / No Pass" for this course
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Mar 11 T:  The Victorian Individual, and the ordinary lives of the Victorians

John Stuart Mill: On Liberty (1075; both selections); The Subjection of Women (1086)
Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man, Chapter 21: "General Summary and Conclusion" (1259) 

*    13 R:  19th-century British visual art
                     
 link to the Tate Gallery collections, the premier collection of British art

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March 16 -23: Spring Break - No Classes
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Mar 25 T:   Charles Dickens and Victorian Fiction

Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol (1357)

Mar 27 R:  A Christmas Carol, continued; see also "Dickens and Christmas"
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Apr   1 T:  Victorian Poetry, 1: Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: "Mariana" (1139), "The Lady of Shalott" (1141), "Ulysses" (1150), "Tithonus" (1152), "Break, Break, Break" (1153), "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1195), "Crossing the Bar" (1229)

Apr   3 R:  Tennyson, continued

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: selections from In Memoriam, A. H. H. (1165: specific sections will be assigned in class)

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Apr   8 T:  Victorian Poetry, 2: Robert Browning

Robert Browning: "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" (1309), "My Last Duchess" (1311), "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" (1314), "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church" (1315), "Love Among the Ruins" (1321), "Fra Lippo Lippi" (1328)

Apr 10 R:  Victorian Poetry, 3: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese (1108; all selections), Prologue to "A Curse for a Nation" (1133), "A Musical Instrument" (1135), "The Best Thing in the World" (1136)

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Apr 15 T:  A day for catching up

Apr 17 R:  The Victorian social context: read anthology selections as follows:

Frances Power Cobbe (1517), Sarah Stickney Ellis (1521), Caroline Norton (1528), Thomas Hughes (1536), Isabella Beeton (1538), Queen Victoria (1540)
Godey's Lady's Book: the most famous Victorian women's magazine

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*   22 T:   Aesthetes, Decadents, and the closing of the Victorian era

"Aesthetes, Decadence, and the Fin de Siècle (1939)
James McNeill Whistler: from "Mr. Whistler's ‘Ten O'Clock'" (1945)
Algernon Charles Swinburne: "The Leper" (1652), "Hymn to Proserpine" (1658), "A Forsaken Garden" (1661)

Apr 24 R:  Aesthetes and Decadents, 2

Walter Pater: The Renaissance, Preface (1665) and Conclusion (1669)
Oscar Wilde: "Impression du Matin" (1862), "The Harlot's House" (1863), "Symphony in Yellow" (1864), selection from The Decay of Lying (1864), Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1883)

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Apr 29 T:  A week of review, reconsideration, some tentative conclusions, and a look ahead
                 Course Portfolio due IN CLASS today

May  1 R:  Discussion concludes, as does the course
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Final Examination:   10:00 - noon, Friday, 9 May