Department of English

Fulfills Distributional Course in Arts and Letters

The 18th and 19th centuries have long been characterized as the centuries when Britain expanded and consolidated its global empire. This course reads its way through a broad swath of British poets writing during those historical periods against the backdrop of colonial expansion, tracking and tracing the ways in which poetry and empire respond to and shape one another. How did British poets treat issues of international conquest, trade, and power relations during the 18th and 19th centuries? What kinds of authority? We'll explore these and other related questions through reading, writing, and discussing the works of Milton, Dryden, Behn, Pope, Johnson, Gray, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Hardy, and others. Course requirements include regular attendance and participation in class discussions, weekly response papers, two longer papers, and one in-class presentation.