2012-2013 Fall Semester
Assist Prof Dr Nurten Birlik
This course will be an advanced introduction to radical innovations in literature of the Romantic Period. After close analysis of the social, political and philosophical context of the period with special emphasis on French Revolution and the ideas of Burke, Paine, Rousseau and Kant, the course will mainly highlight six major poets of the period. These poets’ relation to their predecessors, particularly to Augustan and primitive Neoclassicism, and their legacy will be put under scrutiny. Grading policy:
20 % presentations and class participation
40% term papers (3 for the PhDs and two for the MAs)
40 % mid-term and final exam
Course Outline
Week I: Social and Historical Context
From Wu pp. 3-47
Week II: from Wu 48-101
Week III: Romanticism and Enlightenment from Day, pp:1-79, 126-183.
French Revolution and Romanticism from Jarvis pp: 1-43, 143-172 (outside reading)
Week IV: Pre-romantics:
William Collins “Ode to Evening”
James Thomson from “The Seasons”
Thomas Gray “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Edmund Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France and Thomas Paine from The Rights of Man (outside reading)
Week V:
William Blake
From Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience, The Book of Thell, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Visions of Daughters of Albion
Week VI:
Burns
"Tis Liberty's bold note I swell" "Here's a Health to them that's awa"
"For a'that and a'that"
"Afton Water"
Wordsworth
Preface to Lyrical Ballads, “Strange Fits Have I known,”“I wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,”“The Solitary Reaper,” “Michael,” “The Ruined Cottage” From The Prelude, Book, I and II. “Lucy Gray”
Week VII:
Wordsworth
Week VIII:
Coleridge, Conversation Poems: “The Eolian Harp” “Reflections on Having Left and Place of Retirement” “This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison” “Frost and Midnight” “Dejection: An Ode”
Week IX:
Coleridge “The Rime,” “Kubla Khan,”