This course will explore the materials and contexts of the first generation of Romantic Writing, focusing particularly on notions of literary production and how they relate to theories of community. We will pay close attention to the rhetorical traditions and politics of three literary communities central to the period: the Della Cruscans, the circle surrounding radical publisher Joseph Johnson, and the circle surrounding publisher Joseph Cottle of Bristol. We will pay particular attention at the beginning of the course to the relationship between various religious and political rhetorical modes, and therefore to the relation between audience and genre. This means that, while we will be reading a great deal of poetry (by Smith, Southey, Coleridge, Blake, Barbauld, Wordsworth, and Robinson, to name but a few), we also will be reading novels and non-fiction prose (by Godwin, Barbauld, Coleridge, Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Smith, and others).

This course requires that you have an e-mail account and that you use it. There will be weekly responses, a presentation, and a final paper.