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.