English
931: English
931:
Symposium in Romanticism --
British Women Poets of the Romantic Period
Fall 2007
Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews Hall
472-1806
Office: 10-30-11:30 MWF
and by appointment
Schedule of assigned readings
Numbers in parentheses refer to pages in Feldman, ed. British Women Poets of the Romantic Era
Aug 27 M 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
Sep 3 M – Labor Day holiday – no class meeting
Sep 10 M 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"]
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),
Beachy Head (692), The Emigrants
Sep 17 M 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), “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), “The Lady of the Black
Tower” (639)
William Wordsworth, "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”
Sep 24 M Anna Letitia Barbauld
“The Mouse’s Petition” (56), “An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley’s Study” (59),
“Epistle to William Wilberforce,” Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation,“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)
Anna Seward
Monody on Major Andre [handout] , "Sonnet IV: To Honora Sneyd, Whose Health Was
Always Best in Winter" (654), "Sonnet VII" (655), "Sonnet LXVII. On Dr. Johnson's Unjust
Criticisms" (658), "Sonnet LXVII. Onb the Posthumous Fame of Dr. Johnson" (659),
"Sonnet LXXI. To the Poppy" (660), "Sonnet XCV" (661)
Oct 1 M 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 James Forbes, Esq. On His Bringing Me Flowers from Vaucluse” (820)
Joanna Baillie
“Wind” (27), “Thunder” (30), “The Kitten” (33), “A Summer's Day,” “A Winter's Day,”
“Address to a Steam-Vessel” (39), “Lines to a Teapot” (45)
William Wordsworth, "Michael"
John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Oct 8 M 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), “Anna’s Complaint”
Ameila 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”], “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” [handout]
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), “The Spinning Wheel” (550), “A Love
Letter” (552)
Oct 15 M Poetics and women’s writing in the early Romantic era
Mary Robinson, A Letter to the Women of England (1799)
William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800/02)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (1821)
Oct 22 M – Fall Break – no classes
Oct 29 M That strange gap: women poets between 1805 and 1815
Mary Tighe
Psyche
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, a Poem (70)
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)
Catharine Quigley
“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” [handouts]
Nov 5 M Women poets during the Regency
Special issue of Keats-Shelley Journal
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)
Nov 12 M Felicia Hemans
Modern Greece, “The Graves of a Household” (291), “A Monarch’s Death-Bed” (294),
“The Wife of Asdrubal,” “Gertrude, or Fidelity till Death” (295), "To Wordsworth,"
“The Image in Lava” (301), “The Grave of a Poetess”
Nov 19 M Letitia Elizabeth Landon
“The Oak” (371), “Home” (372), “Hannibal’s Oath” (373), “The Altered River” (374),
“Lines of Life” (376), Carrick-a-Rede, Ireland” (279), “Fountain’s Abbey” (381),
“Marius at the Ruins of Carthage” (382), “The Unknown Grave” (384)
Nov 21 W – Thanksgiving holiday – no classes
Nov 26 M Working toward a conclusion
Dec 3 M Project reports
Dec 10 M Project reports