Advanced Studies In Romanticism

What makes a poem Romantic? Does it have something to do with the style in which it is written? Is it a question of content or mood? Or can we use 'Romantic' to simply categorise poems written between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Focussing primarily on verse, students will examine a rich range of texts labelled 'Romantic', reflecting on what it means to read, sound out, listen to, and critically interpret poetry of the period. The course combines close reading with contextual analysis, giving students the opportunity to develop their understanding of poetic forms and devices while exploring works in their aesthetic, cultural, and political milieu. It also draws together current research in the fields of Romantic studies and poetics with literary criticism published during the period, by writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Throughout the semester, students will consider how poems on the syllabus were experienced by Romantic audiences, using the William Blake Archive to access high-resolution reproductions of Blake's illuminated books and the Princeton Prosody Archive to access late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century guidelines for reading poetry aloud.