Description

Romanticism has profoundly shaped modern sensibilities, informing our conceptions of individual subjectivity, our notions of the creative artist and the role of art, our understanding of the relation of the individual to the natural world, and our ideas of the fantastic and the uncanny. Arising as an ambivalent reaction to various intellectual strands of the Enlightenment, and a rebellion against classicism in the arts, the Romantic movement swept Europe in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789 and had momentous effects on all art forms: literature, music, dance, and the visual arts. In this course we will explore some major Romantic texts in relation to a set of key themes: revolution and liberty; the role of art and the conception of the creative artist; the exaltation of the emotions, the senses and the imagination; the relation of the individual to nature; the uncanny and the fantastic.

Course Contents:
Contexts and Ideas of British Romanticism

Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Wordsworth’s Poetry (Lyrics and Odes)
Lyrical Ballads
Ode to Duty
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

John Keats (Letters, Sonnets and Odes)
Letters to Fanny Brawne
Odes
Ode on Indolence
Ode to Psyche
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode on Melancholy
To Autumn
Sonnets
On the Sonnet
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
On Sitting down to Read King Lear Once Again
"Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell"

S.T. Coleridge:
Criticism Biographia Literarria
Poetry Ancient Mariner
Kublai Khan

William Hazlitt The Spirit of the Age

Walter Scott The Talisman

Charles Lamb Essays of Elia

Course Objectives

This course provides Mphil students with an opportunity to extend and deepen their knowledge of literature of the Romantic period by guiding them through a number of central topics and themes: revolution,  the sublime, the ode, history, transcendentalism, confession, sensibility and ecology. Students will read a wide variety of texts from different genres in the Romantic period, including poetry, letters, journals and essays. The course does not attempt to construct a single narrative for the Romantic period, but instead introduces students to a network of relationships between key themes, writers, and critical approaches.

Intended Learning Outcomes 

On completion of this course, the student will be able to demonstrate:

1. Knowledge of and critical engagement with some of the central topics and themes in Romantic literature
2. An understanding of the relationships between these themes and the history, philosophy and culture of the Romantic period
3. Knowledge of contemporary debates and concepts in in modern Romantic criticism and scholarship
4.  The ability to deploy a variety of methodological approaches to the study of romantic literature
5.  The ability to reflect constructively on the development of their own learning and research practice

Readings

M.H. Abrams, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature

Duncan Wu, ed. Romanticism: An Anthology, 4th ed. (Blackwell, 2012)

Stuart Curran, ed., The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism (1993)

Paul de Man, The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York, 1984)

Frye N. A Study of English Romanticism. – New York: Random House, 1968.

English Romantic Poets. Modern essays in criticism. – London, Oxford, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Purkis J. The World of the English Romantic Poets. – London: Heinemann, 1982.

Class Timings (Fall 2020)

Mphil (Literature Section) Wednesday-Thursday 2-3:30 pm

Assesment

• Mid Term :30
• Project :10
• Presentation: 05
• Class participation:05
• Final exam:50