English Romanticism: The First Generation
Stuart Curran profile
R 9-12
This course seeks to reconceive the literary contours of the last generation of the eighteenth century in England, with particular emphasis on its phenomenal last decade. When the label "Pre-Romanticism" was discarded, most of its literature went with it. What didn't ended up in the "Age of Johnson," which is not an age, as I see it, which most contemporary writers may be said to have lived. The result of these appropriations and losses has been to leave the literary history of this crucial period manifestly distorted. We will endeavor to recover its main lines within the usual constraints of little time and available texts.
The following are works from which the final syllabus will be drawn. Prospective classmembers are urged this spring to suggest further texts that would offer potential value to the course.
FICTION
Frances Burney, Evelina
William Godwin, Things as They Are, or...Caleb Williams
Elizabeth Inchblad, A Simple Story
Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling
Ann Radcliffe, The Italian
Charlotte Smith, The Old Manor House
DRAMA
Joanna Baillie, DeMonfort
S.T. Coleridge, Remorse
Hannah Cowley, A Bold Stroke for Husband
Elizabeth Inchblad, Lovers' Vows
Hannah More, The Search After Happiness
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, School for Scandal
William Wordsworth, The Borderers
POETRY
Anna Barbauld, selections
William Blake, selections
S.T. Coleridge, poems, 1794-1800.
William Cowper, selections and from The Task
Erasmus Darwin, from Loves of the Plants
Mary Robinson, selections and Lyrical Tales
Charlotte Smith, selections, The Emigrants, Beachy Head
Robert Southey, selections from the 1790s
William Wordsworth, poems, chiefly from the 1790s
POLEMICAL PROSE
Anna Barbauld, Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
updated 2006-11-14
