Department of English

This course makes the book itself an object of interpretation and a means for understanding the media ecology of the Romantic Period. We will read works in their original forms, and will make the most of the resources of the Kislak Center in order to experience the Romantics as their first readers did. Along the way, we'll explore how authors and publishers compiled and marketed their works across an array of media, from newspapers and magazines to stage adaptations and exhibitions. What does it mean to read a poem, essay, or short story in the context of a larger collection instead of on its own? What can the responses of original readers teach us about the works themselves? Probable authors and works include Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771); Charlotte Smith, Elegiac Sonnets (1784); Robert Burns, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786); Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative (1789); William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789, 1794); Lord Byron, The Giaour (1813), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep (1816); and Jane Austen, Persuasion.