SYLLABUS FOR E457 BRITISH ROMANTIC LITERATURE
CSU FULLERTON, SPRING 2006
*2023 Note. Most links have been removed from this archival version of the syllabus.
COURSE INFORMATION. English 457, Course Code 12871. Thursday 12:00 – 2:45 p.m., Irvine Campus 218. Office hours: Thursday 11:00 – 12:00 p.m. Irvine Campus 254. Email: e457_at_ajdrake.com. Catalog: “ENGL 457, The Romantic Movement in English Literature…. Prerequisites: survey of English, American or world literature; an upper-division literature course; or equivalent. Major writers such as Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Units: (3).” I will use +/- grading.
REQUIRED TEXTS AT IRVINE CAMPUS BOOKSTORE
Abrams, M.H. et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2A. 7th edition. ISBN 2A = 0393975681.
Austen, Jane. Persuasion. Ed. James Kinsley. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 0192802631.
Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. New York: Dover, 1994. ISBN 0486281221.
Godwin, William. From Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, online selection from Book 4, Ch. 2: “Of Revolutions.”
Hazlitt, William. Selected Writings. Ed. Jon Cook. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. ISBN 0192838008.
Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. ISBN: 0192835904.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Cenci electronic edition.
COURSE RATIONALE AND ACTIVITIES
FOCUS AND OBJECTIVES. This course will cover texts by the most celebrated Romantic poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, but it will also explore authors outside that canonical group and genre: Mary Robinson, William Godwin, William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey, and James Hogg, among others. And because, as Anne Elliot informs the mournful Captain Benwick in Persuasion, people ought to have a steadying “allowance of prose” in their readerly diet, we will explore Jane Austen’s Regency novel to counterbalance all the Romantic poetry we are reading. Romantic poetics at once makes a strong demand upon language to transmit world-healing passion and harbors an underlying dread that this demand may prove unfulfillable. We will register both modes of this complex movement, and more.
ACTIVITIES. In class, there will be a mix of lectures, student presentations, whole-class and smaller-group discussion, occasional quizzes, an essay, and a final exam. I encourage questions and comments—class sessions improve when students take an active part. Outside class, do the assigned readings before the relevant discussion dates, complete your journal sets as outlined below, start planning and drafting your essay early, and work on your presentation drafts. In literary studies, the aim is to read and discuss actively and thereby to develop your own voice in response to the texts you read. Insightful interpretation and the ability to make compelling connections are central goals. The essay, discussions, presentations, and journal-keeping should combine to help you work towards these goals.
HOW YOUR PERFORMANCE WILL BE EVALUATED
COURSE POLICIES. Please review the course policies page early in the semester since it addresses matters such as attendance, incompletes and withdrawal, late or missing work, and academic integrity.
PRESENTATIONS REQUIREMENT. Students will sign up for several (usually three) 3-5-minute informal presentations. On the first day, students will choose authors; I will add specific questions and post a schedule on the presentations page. Each session will feature several presentations and comments by the instructor and other participants. At least two days before you present, contact me to discuss your ideas. (25% of course grade.)
JOURNALS REQUIREMENT. Responses to a choice of questions on each author. Due in class Weeks 4, 8, 13, and Sunday May 28th. Electronic format required. Four separate sets of journal entries will be due on the dates below, preferably word-processed and emailed. Please respond to the specified amount of study questions for each author. Numbers in parentheses mean “respond to any x number of study questions total on this author.” For example, “Wordsworth (5 questions)” means “respond to whichever five questions you prefer from the many available on the Wordsworth questions page.” Together, the four journal sets are 25% of the course grade.
PAPER REQUIREMENT. Rough draft suggested, final draft (5-7 pg.) due by exam day or as specified towards the bottom of the syllabus page. Follow MLA guidelines. Graduate papers should respond to primary texts and secondary criticism; for undergraduates research is optional. See Resources/Guides/Writing Guides: MLA, Grammar, Deductive, Citing, Analyzing, and Editing. (25%)
FINAL EXAM REQUIREMENT. The exam will consist of substantive id passages, short questions requiring paragraph responses, and one comparative essay. There will be more choices than required responses. Books and notes allowed for all sections. Exam date: Thursday, May 25th 12:00-1:50 p.m. (25%)
QUESTIONS FOR JOURNALS AND PRESENTATIONS
*2023 Note. Visitors may download the following questions in PDF format: BRITISH ROMANTICISM.
Blake | M. Robinson | Burke | Wollstonecraft | Paine | Godwin | Hazlitt | W. Wordsworth | D. Wordsworth | Coleridge | Byron | Austen | P. B. Shelley | Keats | De Quincey | Hogg
SCHEDULE: WORKS DISCUSSED ON DATES SPECIFIED
WEEK 1
02/02. Introduction to course and to wiki features.
WEEK 2
02/09. William Blake and Mary Robinson. Songs of Innocence and of Experience (43-59), “The Book of Thel” (59-64), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (72-84). Robinson’s “London’s Summer Morning” (92-93), “January, 1795” (93-94), “The Poor Singing Dame” (94-96), and “The Haunted Beach” (96-97).
WEEK 3
02/16. Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, William Hazlitt. From Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (121-28). From Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men (128-33). From Paine’s Rights of Man (133-37). From Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, online selection from Book 4, Ch. 2: “Of Revolutions.” Hazlitt’s “The French Revolution” (84-98, Oxford edition).
WEEK 4
02/23. William Wordsworth. “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads (238-51), “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” (252), “Three years she grew” (252-53), “Lucy Gray” (254-56), “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (284-85), “The Solitary Reaper” (293-94), “Tintern Abbey” (235-38); “Intimations of Immortality” (286-92). Journal Set 1 Due.
WEEK 5
03/02. William and Dorothy Wordsworth. From William’s The Prelude (303-83). From Dorothy’s Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (383-97).
WEEK 6
03/09. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From Biographia Literaria (467-86), from Lectures on Shakespeare (486-89), from The Statesman’s Manual (489-92), “The Eolian Harp” (419-20), “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (422-38), “Kubla Khan” (439-41), “Frost at Midnight” (457-58), “Dejection: an Ode” (459-62).
WEEK 7
03/16. Lord Byron. “Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos” (555-56), “She Walks in Beauty” (556-57), “Darkness” (559-60), “January 22nd. Missolonghi” (562-63), Manfred (588-621).
WEEK 8
03/23. Lord Byron. From Don Juan (621-89), from Letters (689-98). Journal Set 2 Due.
WEEK 9
03/30. Spring Recess — no classes all week.
WEEK 10
04/06. Jane Austen. Persuasion. (Film)
WEEK 11
04/13. Jane Austen. Persuasion. (Oxford edition)
WEEK 12
04/20. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley’s “Defense of Poetry” (789-802), “Mutability” (701), “Mont Blanc” (720-23), “Ozymandias” (725-26), “Ode to the West Wind” (730-32), “To a Sky-Lark” (765-67), “Adonais” (772-86).
WEEK 13
04/27. Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Cenci electronic edition and Prometheus Unbound (732-62). Journal Set 3 Due.
WEEK 14
05/04. John Keats. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (826-27), “The Eve of St. Agnes” (834-44), “Ode to a Nightingale” (849-51), “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (851-53), “To Autumn” (872-73), from Letters (889-903).
WEEK 15
05/11. William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey. Hazlitt’s “On Personal Identity” (190-202), “Originality” (270-77), “On the Elgin Marbles” (277-96). (Oxford edition). from De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (529-43), “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” (543-46).
WEEK 16
05/18. James Hogg. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. (Oxford edition)
FINAL EXAM
Final Exam Date: Thursday, May 25th 12:00 – 1:50 p.m. Journal Set 4 and the Term Paper will be due by email attachment on or before Sunday, May 28th. (I must turn in grades by Friday, June 2nd, 2006.) For other courses, see CSUF’s Final Exam Schedule.