Department of English

Romanticism declared a revolution in lyric verse, redefining what poetry meant in the Anglophone world—and what it largely continues to mean, still to be reckoned with even for poets who reject the emphasis William Wordsworth and others placed on individual experience. This course will offer a survey of (mostly) British poetry from an era marked by political uprisings and visions of emancipation as well as counterrevolutionary reaction, the shock of industrialization, environmental crisis, imperialism, and war. Paying attention to poetic form as well as context, we will explore the work of William Blake, Anna Barbauld, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Smith, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats, among others. We will practice different ways of reading as we discuss major and minor works in various poetic forms, meters, and genres, and as we encounter themes including nature, the sublime, solitude and city life, childhood, ballads and folklore, ancient ruins and modern empires, struggles for freedom, gothic terror, melancholia, intoxication, and the visionary possibilities of poetry itself. By engaging with a range of poems through brief response posts and close reading exercises, a creative adaptation, and a critical essay, you will develop your skills in formal and textual analysis and interpretation. This course fulfills Sector 1 and Sectors 4 and 5 of the English Standard Major as well as the pre-1900 Seminar. No background knowledge of Romanticism or of poetry is expected, and non-majors are welcome.