Romantic Literature
English 4023
University of Texas San Antonio 1604 Fall 2008
MB 1.208 T TH 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Karen Dodwell, Ph.D.
Office: MB 2.248M 830 460 1502
UTSA Catalogue Description
(3-0) 3 hours credit. Prerequisite: completion of the Core Curriculum requirement in literature. Selected readings in the fiction, poetry, and prose of the British Romantic period.
Course Objectives
¨ Read literature of the British Romantic era and grasp fundamental concepts in Romantic studies
¨ Understand the perspectives and accomplish- ments of the past by viewing British Romantic literature as part of a continuum of literary development
¨ Explore the intersections of gender, race, religion, and politics in British Romantic literature, especially within the context of contemporary theory and criticism
¨ Develop a vocabulary and a voice for discussing topics in British Romanticism in classroom discussions and scholarly papers.
¨ Develop the ability to read critical texts and integrate scholarly debate into one’s own scholarly writing
¨ Skillfully write a substantial argumentative paper on a topic in Romantic studies, using MLA style and secondary sources.
¨ Acquire skills in close reading, synthesizing information, textual analysis, research, and bibliography that will advance a professional career
¨ Examine Romantic literature through the lens of high school English teachers who teach pre-AP, AP, and regular English courses in a high school curriculum
¨ Examine Romantic literature through the lens of graduate students in English who are exploring concentrations in genre, period, and theory.
Texts
Romanticism: An Anthology (3rd edition) – Ed. Duncan Wu
A Companion to Romanticism – Ed. Duncan Wu
Course Policies
¨ Attendance is mandatory. Roll will be taken in every class. Avoid the habit of walking in late and disrupting the class. If you are consistently late, make adjustments to your routine of driving, parking, walking, etc.
¨ Class participation is an essential part of the learning experience in the course. Good attendance and consistent pro-active participation moves a borderline final grade up.
¨ Dropping the course by the specified UTSA deadline is the responsibility of the student. Failure to drop by the drop date may result in a grade of “F” in the course.
¨ Support services, including registration assistance and equipment, are available to students with documented disabilities through the Office of Disabled Student Services (DSS), MS 2.03.18. Students are encouraged to contact that office at 458-4157 early in the semester to make arrangements.
¨ Plagiarism of any sort will, of course, not be tolerated. Please consult the University web-page on plagiarism: http://www.utsa.edu/tlc/weblinks/plagiarism.htm.
Students may not incorporate research information and writing prepared for another course into the papers required for this course.
¨ Written responses and papers should be printed and submitted in class. It is the student’s responsibility to format papers in MLA style and print them out on 8 ½ x 11 paper. Written work may be submitted electronically only in rare cases with the permission of the instructor.
¨ Written responses are due at the beginning of class and may not be turned in late because the content is discussed in class on the due date. One grade will be dropped to accommodate emergencies.
¨ Late papers #1, #2 and #3 are excused from point penalties if a student can verify an incapacitating physical illness or death in the family. Students who will be absent for religious reasons or to conduct official University business should make arrangements with the instructor before the absence in order to avoid late point penalties.
¨ Unexcused late paper #1 and #2 receive the following point penalties:
1 class period late = 10 point deduction
2 class periods late = 20 point deduction
3 + class periods late = 25 point deduction
¨ Unexcused late paper #3 will receive a 25 point deduction if it is submitted after the due date, the last day of class.
Include a separate cover sheet on a late paper that includes the following: student’s name, course title, paper due date, date of submission, and number of class periods late.
Do not expect a late paper to be returned in the same grading cycle as on-time papers. Most likely a late paper will be returned to the student much later than on-time papers.
¨ The last possible moment to submit a late paper is during the scheduled time for the final exam. When the instructor leaves the class room on the day of the final exam, the course is over and late work is not accepted.
¨ The mid-term exam can be made up if the student can verify an incapacitating physical illness or a death in the family. Students who will be absent for religious reasons or to conduct official University business must make arrangements with the instructor before the absence.
Course Requirements
Written responses 15%
Panel discussions 5%
Midterm Exam 10%
Final Exam 25%
Paper #1 5%
Paper #2 10%
Paper #3 30%
Written responses are assigned in class and completed as homework outside of class. Students write in an informal exploratory style (using Standard English) in response to questions that will stimulate close readings of assigned texts. Page length = 2-3 pages.
Panel discussions are designed to enhance student participation. Four students sit at the front of the class as a panel and take the lead in discussing the texts assigned for the day. The panelists also come prepared with questions for the class.
The midterm and final exam will contain brief identification, multiple choice, short essays and long essays. The final will be comprehensive, but it will primarily focus on the works studied after the midterm exam.
Paper 1 – a three-page scholarly paper that presents an argument on one poem or prose work on the course reading schedule. (See list of potential topics below.) No secondary sources are required.
Paper 2 – a seven-page scholarly paper that presents an argument on at least two poems or prose works on the course reading schedule and cites a minimum of four secondary sources. Paper 2 may be an extension of the Paper 1. Students must attach the graded version of Paper 1 with instructor’s comments before Paper 2 will be evaluated.
Paper 3 – an eighteen-page paper that presents an argument on at least four poems or prose works on the course reading schedule and cites a minimum of ten secondary sources. Paper 3 may be an extension of the first two papers. Students must attach graded Papers 1 and 2 with instructor’s comments before Paper 3 will be evaluated.
Paper topics - Formulate and support an original thesis on one of the following topics (or have a topic of your choosing approved by the instructor):
¨ The representation of impoverished people in Romantic literature
¨ The Romantic prospect poem
¨ Attitudes toward children and childhood in Romantic literature
¨ Representations of death in Romantic literature
¨ Representations of the sublime in Romantic literature
¨ Representations of the picturesque in Romantic literature
¨ Attitudes toward insanity in Romantic literature
¨ The beautiful woman and/or the horrific woman in Romantic literature
¨ Enslavement in Romantic literature
¨ Sleep, dreams, and nightmares in Romantic literature
¨ Melancholy and dejection in Romantic literature
¨ The hut and the cottage as dwelling places in Romantic literature
¨ Poems written in honor of William Wordsworth
Paper #1, 2, and 3 guidelines
¨ The articles in A Companion to Romanticism, edited by Duncan Wu, are a good place to begin your search for secondary sources. See the “References and Further Reading” section at the end of the articles.
¨ Use MLA style: include endnotes (not footnotes) in-text citation, and a works cited page.
Grading
A = 90 – 100 D = 60 - 69
B = 80 – 89 F = below 60
C = 70 - 79
Reading Schedule
Aug 28, Thurs - Introduction to course and to Romanticism
Sep 2, Tues
Anthology - Introduction, pp. xxx-xlii.
Companion - Romanticism: The Brief History of a Concept by Seamus Perry
William Blake
Artist, Poet, and Fiery Visionary
Sep 4, Thurs
Anthology - Introduction, pp. 169-174
All Religions are One
There is No Natural Religion
The Book of Thel
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Sep 9, Tues – Written response due
Anthology - Songs of Innocence and Experience, pp. 179-206
The French Revolution in Poetry and Prose
Sep 11, Thurs
Anthology – Edmund Burke, pp. 7-13
Helen Marie Williams, intro and all poems
Companion – 3. From Revolution to Romanticism: The Historical Context to 1800 - David Duff
10. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France - David Bromwich
Anti-slavery Poems
Sep 16, Tues - Paper #1 is due in class
Anthology – Cowper, On Slavery, pp. 18-19
Hannah More, Slavery: A Poem, pp. 66- 73
Ann Yearsley, A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade, pp. 160-169;
Companion – 46. Slavery and Romantic Writing - Alan Richardson
William Wordsworth
Lyrical Ballads and Prelude
Sep 18, Thurs
Companion – 13. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads by Scott McEathron
Anthology - Goody Blake and Harry Gill
Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman
We are Seven
Lines Written in Early Spring
The Thorn
The Idiot Boy
Sep 23, Tues – Written response due
Anthology - Preface to Lyrical Ballads, p. 495-507
Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Sep 25, Thurs
Anthology – Prelude, Parts I and II, pp. 448- 473
Companion – 16. William Wordsworth, the Prelude - Jonathan Wordsworth
Sep 30, Tues
Anthology – The Prelude, pp. 553-559 (line 80) and pp. 563-570.
Online – Wordsworth and Coleridge: the Friendship by Adam Sisman (Search on Times Online)
Oct 2, Thurs – Midterm Exam
Samual Taylor Coleridge
The Tensions of Romantic Imagination
Oct 7, Tues
Anthology – Introduction, pp. 592-598
Sonnet and letter, pp. 598-599
Eolian Harp (1834 version)
Religious Musings
Letters, pp. 610-612
This Lime Tree Bower My Prison (1834 version)
Frost at Midnight: (1834)
Biographia Literaria pp. 691-694
Oct 9, Thurs = Paper #2 is due in class
Anthology – Kubla Khan ( 1816)
Christabel
Companion – 12. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan, The Ancient Mariner and Christabel - Seamus Perry (Sections on Kubla Khan and Christabel only)
Who is Dorothy Wordsworth?
Oct 14, Tues
Anthology – Introduction and entire section of works
Companion – 14. Dorothy Wordsworth, Journals by Pamela Woof
Online – Poor Dorothy Wordsworth by Margaret Drabble, Times Online
Charlotte Smith
Beachy Head, a Prospect Poem
Oct 16, Thurs
Anthology – Introduction and Beachy Head
Companion - 19. Charlotte Smith, Beachy Head by Jacqueline M. Labbe, Sections I, III, and IV.
Lord Byron and the Byronic Hero
Oct 21, Tues – Written response due
Anthology – Introduction
She Walks in Beauty
When We Two Parted
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage- Cantos 1-55
Oct 23, Thurs
Anthology - Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – Cantos 62 to end
Oct 28, Tues
Anthology – Manfred
Felicia Dorothea Hemans’
Records of Women
Oct 30, Thurs – Written response due
Anthology – Introduction
Arabella Stuart
The Bride of the Greek Isle
The Switzer’s Wife
Gertrude, or Fidelity till Death
Companion – 31. Felicia Hemans, Records of Women by Adam Roberts
Nov 4, Tues
Anthology – Edith, A Tale of the Woods
Indian Woman’s Death Song
Pauline
Juana
The American Forest Girl
Madeline, A Domestic Tale
Percy Shelley and the Romantic Quest
Nov 6, Thurs
Anthology – Introduction and Alastor (Preface and long poem)
Nov 11, Tuesday – Written response due
Anthology – Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
Journal Letter Shelley to Peacock
Mont Blanc
Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples
Ode to the West Wind
To A Skylark
John Keats’ Romantic Trajectories
Nov 13, Thurs
Anthology – Introduction
On First Looking in to Chapman’s Homer
Letter from John Keats to Benjamin Bailey
Sonnet: When I have fears that I may cease to be
Letters to John Hamilton Reynolds, 2/3/1818 and 5/3/1818
Nov 18, Tues – Written response due
Anthology – The Eve of St. Agnes
Nov 20, Thurs
Anthology – Ode to Psyche
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to a Grecian Urn
Companion – 23. John Keats, Odes by John Creaser
Nov 25, Tues
Anthology – Ode on Melancholy
Ode on Indolence
To Autumn
Online – In Praise of Melancholy by Eric G. Wilson
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=tk1twsk466pmt0m7fj6py116kyc71fhv
or search Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 18, 2008
A Farewell
Poems of Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Elizabeth Barret Browning
Dec 2, Tues
Anthology – Introduction to Landon
Stanzas on the Death of Mrs. Hemans
Felicia Hemans
The Princess Victoria
On Wordsworth’s Cottage, near Grasmere Lake
The Farewell
Dec 4, Thurs - Paper #3 due in class
Anthology – Introduction to E. B. Browning
Stanzas on the Death of Lord Byron
Stanzas Addressed to Miss Landon, and suggested by her ‘Stanzas on the Death of Mrs Hemans’
Dec 9, Tues – no class; study day
Dec 10, Wed - Final exam
10:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.