English 931: English Authors after 1800
Fall 2010
William Wordsworth
Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews; 472-1806
office: 10-12 TR, and by appointment
Email Stephen Behrendt
SYMPOSIUM DESCRIPTION
I hope we can agree to conduct our sessions as an ongoing symposium. in which our principal vehicle is roundtable discussion among a community of inquiring spirits bringing to the works of William Wordsworth a variety of interests and expertises. We shall focus most closely on what are generally regarded as Wordsworth’s most productive years, which will mean especially the two decades or so immediately following the French Revolution. We will also consider (to a lesser extent) Wordsworth’s prose, especially as it relates to his poetry and to that of his contemporaries, as well as to that of those earlier writers who most influenced him. Finally, we will consider, throughout the semester, how and why Wordsworth assumed such cultural prominence during his lifetime and why – even today – he remains such a foundational figure both in British literary history generally and in contemporary poetry, poetics and aesthetics.
My own primary critical and theoretical orientation is informed by several impulses, chief among which are historicism and New Historicism, reader-response criticism, reception theory, and feminist theory, coupled with an ongoing commitment to careful formalist analysis of primary texts themselves. I am open, of course, to other interests and orientations, and I welcome the broadest possible variety of approaches to our work, since it is in diversity that the greatest potential for useful inquiry lies. And while I do not presume (or assume) that anyone in the group is already an “old hand” at Wordsworth and his circle, I do expect everyone to be able to undertake and pursue whatever background preparation may be needed to get sufficiently “up to speed” regarding matters of biographical, historical, critical, and theoretical interest for us to proceed at each session in an informed and articulate fashion.
I encourage everyone to adopt as widely interdisciplinary approach to this symposium – and to the matters we shall explore – as possible. Read widely and extensively, especially in history, in the history of art and culture, and in the contemporary periodical press (including both widely-circulated visual works like the caricatures of Rowlandson, the Cruikshanks, Gillray, Heath, and others and the frequently boisterous Radical press). At any given moment, we should try to regard our materials as lying at the intersection of a great many roadways, or as a textual or cultural “landscape” which we may attempt to “map” from a variety of perspectives and with a variety of optical (and intellectual) devices.
MY EXPECTATIONS FOR YOU
I expect you to read: the primary works on the syllabus are the bare minimum. I will try to provide useful suggestions for further study throughout the term.
I also expect you to talk: we shall not have a symposium unless we have general – and generous – discussion. Be considerate, of course: please do not dominate. And please be courteous as well. But by no means be retiring and reticent. The success (or failure) of this symposium rests squarely upon all of us, collectively. If you are unwilling to engage actively and regularly in serious discussion, I encourage you to reconsider your enrollment in the symposium.
REQUIREMENTS FOR GRADE
1. A major course project, preferably in the form of an extended scholarly essay approximating the form and format of a professional “article.” I will ask that each of you present a brief version of your project to the symposium during our final two meetings. (c.50% of grade)
2. Consistent contributions to the intellectually appropriate daily functioning of the symposium. (c.35%)
3. Informal “lead” reports on various subjects (as indicated on the reading list) throughout the semester, to provide background information and initiate discussion. (c. 15%)
Please note: Regular, active contributions to, and participation in, symposium discussions and activities are required. I consider them to be essential, graded components of the seminar/symposium experience at the graduate level. For a more detailed explanation, follow this link.
TEXTS
Wordsworth’s poetry
I have ordered the “Wordsworth Edition” of Wordsworth’s poetry, which is a cheap reprint of the older Oxford Standard Authors edition, complete with its tiny typeface and its two-column format, not by choice but out of plain exigency. The best modern edition is that by John O. Hayden, originally published by Yale UP and subsequently purchased and published (once) by Viking/Penguin and then allowed to go out of print. I encourage you to scour the new and used bookstores or the on-line vendors like Amazon or Barnes and Noble to locate decent, readable copies of Wordsworth’s poems.
Oxford has published an alternative text in its series, “The Oxford Authors.” This edition, edited by Stephen Gill, differs from virtually all other editions in that it reproduces the first print versions of the various poems (rather than the customary 1850 “final” versions), and it does so in the order of their composition. I have ordered this edition as well, and it is the one we will probably use most often.
Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads. 2nd ed. Ed. R. L. Brett and A. R. Jones. New introduction by Nicholas Roe. London: Routledge, 2005. I have ordered this annotated edition of the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, both for its good commentary and for its generous margins, but you do not need to purchase a copy if you are able to find other editions of Wordsworth’s poems.
The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850. Ed. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. Buy this. We will be working with these texts, which are well edited and are enhanced by good annotations and excellent (though occasionally dated) supplementary materials.
Juliet Barker. Wordsworth. New York: Harper, 2001. This is an abridged paperback version of a biography originally published by Viking in 2000. It is an unusually readable biography that effectively situates Wordsworth in his times, both as a private citizen (brother, lover, husband, father) and as a public figure (poet and Poet).
Additionally, I will make available scanned copies of the principal editions of Wordsworth's poems that appeared during his lifetime. You will be able to access these PDF files through the "Course Documents" section of the symposium entry on Blackboard.