Topics in Romantic Poetry: Romantic Ruins and Inventing a National Literature
Michael Gamer profile
MWF 11
In this class, we'll explore a range of texts written in Britain
during the volatile period of political reform, agitation, and
government repression from 1745 to 1848. At a time when Britain
itself is undergoing incredible economic and political changes both at
home and abroad, its poets become actively interested in producing
writing that is ostentatiously British -- either by self-consciously
placing themselves within an identifiable national lineage, or by
inventing new genealogies out of the fragments of British history. As
we shall see relatively early on in the course, creating a national
literature is a mammouth historical and political undertaking -- one
executed by countless poets, editors, compilers, booksellers,
dramatists, and censors working independently over several decades.
Consequently, the first quarter of the course will be spent in the
decades preceding the so-called romantic era, exploring attempts by
poets like Gray, MacPherson, and Beattie to imagine an origin for
British poetry out of the crumbling traces of British history. From
there, we will use this foundation to read works by a number of poets
and dramatists writing after 1789; we will focus particularly on how,
for a number of writers, real historical events intrude on their
attempts to imagine a coherent Britain. We will read, though not
exclusively, from the following writers: Baillie, Barbauld, Blake,
Bloomfield, Bowles, Byron, Clare, Coleridge, Hemans, Keats, Scott,
Shelley, Smith, Southey, Wordsworth, and Yearsley. The required work
for this course will be two substantial essays, a group response
paper, a set of final exam questions, and a comprehensive final.
(NOTE: Prof. Gamer is the newest member of our standing faculty; you
are welcome to send questions about his courses and/or his general
interests by sending an e-mail message to the address given above.)
updated 2006-11-03
