English 365:

19^th-Century British Poetry and Prose

FALL 1999

Required Text: The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume Two

- Beginning page numbers for each selection are indicated in parentheses. Unless otherwise indicated, you are to read the entire selection, as well as all introductions to the authors. Many of these are excerpts rather than complete works; in these cases you should read all of the excerpt provided in the anthology.

* = turn in reading log in class on these days

Aug 26 R:  The Earlier Romantics, 1: Robinson and Wordsworth

"The Romantics and their Contemporaries" (2)

Mary Robinson: "January, 1795" (196), "The Camp" (200), "London's Summer Morning" (203), Lyrical Tales (201), "The Haunted Beach" (201), "The Old Beggar" (204)

William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads (313, 332), "Simon Lee" (314), "We Are Seven" (317), "Lines Written in Early Spring" (318), "The Thorn" (319), "Note to The Thorn" (324), "Expostulation and Reply" (326), "The Tables Turned" (326), "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (328), "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" (332)
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Aug 31 T:  The Earlier Romantics, 2: Smith, William and Dorothy Wordsworth

Charlotte Smith: "To Melancholy" (362), "Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex" (363), "On being cautioned against walking on a headland overlooking the sea" (363)

William Wordsworth: "Michael" (343), "The world is too much with us" (360), "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802" (360), "London, 1802" (361), "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (433), "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" (434)

Dorothy Wordsworth: "Address to a Child" (453), "The Grasmere Journals" (462)

Sep 2 R:  The Earlier Romantics, 3: Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Sonnet to the River Otter" (478), "The Eolian Harp" (478), "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" (480), "Kubla Khan" (501)

Sep 3 F:  Last day to withdraw from this course without a "W" on your permanent record
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Sep 7 T:  Coleridge, concluded

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, Part 1" (482), "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner [1817] (484)

George Gordon, Lord Byron: Don Juan, Canto 1 (569) and excerpt from Canto 2 (616)
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Sep14 T:  The Younger Romantics, 1: Poetry, Politics, and Social Responsibility

Percy Bysshe Shelley: "To Wordsworth" (653), "Mont Blanc" (653), "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" (657), "Ozymandias" (659), "England in 1819" (660),"To a Sky-Lark" (672)

Sep 16 R:  The Younger Romantics, 2

Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Ode to the West Wind" (660), selection from A Defence of Poetry (695)
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Frankenstein (811)

Read first: selections from John Milton (941), William Godwin ( 948), Byron (948), Lady Caroline Lamb (950), William Hazlitt (954), Percy Bysshe Shelley (955)

Sep 23 R:  Frankenstein, continued

In 1823 the first dramatic version of Frankenstein, by Richard Brinsley Peake, appeared in London under the title, Presumption; or; The Fate of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley saw the production in London and seems to have enjoyed it. The play was revised in the following years. To see the full, combined script of Presumption, click on the link.

Sep 28 T:   Frankenstein, concluded

Sep 30 R:  The Younger Romantics, 3: Keats

John Keats: "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (748), "Sonnet: When I have fears" (758), "The Eve of St. Agnes" (758)
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Oct 5 T:  Keats, concluded

John Keats: "Ode to a Nightingale" (773), "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (775), "To Autumn" (779)

Oct 7 R:  First Writing Project Due In Class

Directions of later Romanticism: Felicia Hemans

Felicia Hemans: "The Wife of Asdrubal" (707), "Evening Prayer, at a Girls' School" (713), "Casabianca" (714), Records of Woman (716), "The Bride of the Greek Isles" (716), "Properzia Rossi" (721), "The Homes of England" (728), "The Graves of a Household" (729)
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"The Victorian Age" (1032)
Thomas Carlyle: Past and Present (1082; all selections)
Parliamentary Papers: (1100; both selections)

Oct 14 R:  The Victorian Individual

John Stuart Mill: On Liberty (1121; both selections); The Subjection of Women (1132)
Charles Darwin: "The Descent of Man, Chapter 21: General Summary and Conclusion" (1298)

* Oct 21 R:  19^th-century British visual art
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Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

Nov 2 T:  Victorian Poetry, 1: Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: "Mariana" (1187), "The Lady of Shalott" (1189), "Ulysses" (1198), "Tithonus" (1200), "Break, Break, Break" (1201), "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1243), "Crossing the Bar" (1281)

Nov 4 R:  Tennyson, continued

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: selections from In Memoriam, A. H. H. (1214: specific sections will be assigned in class)
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Robert Browning: "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" (1349), "My Last Duchess" (1351), "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" (1354), "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church" (1355), "Love Among the Ruins" (1360), "Fra Lippo Lippi" (1367)

11 R Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese (1155; all selections), Prologue to "A Curse for a Nation" (1182), "A Musical Instrument" (1183), "The Best Thing in the World" (1184)
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Frances Power Cobbe (1602), Sarah Stickney Ellis (1607), Caroline Norton (1614), Thomas Hughes (1616), Harriet Martineau (1618), Isabella Beeton (1621), Queen Victoria (1623)
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* Nov 23 T:  George Eliot and Shorter Victorian Fiction

George Eliot: "Brother Jacob" (1522)

Aesthetes, Decadents, and the closing of the Victorian era

Algernon Charles Swinburne: "The Leper" (1746), "Hymn to Proserpine" (1752), "A Forsaken Garden" (1755)

Dec 2 R:  Aesthetes and Decadents, 2

Walter Pater: The Renaissance, Preface (1759) and Conclusion (1763)

Oscar Wilde: "Impression du Matin" (1856), "The Harlot's House" (1857), "Symphony in Yellow" (1858), selection from The Decay of Lying (1858), Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1881)
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* Dec 7 T:  A week of review, reconsideration, some tentative conclusions, and a look ahead

Dec 9 R:  Discussion concludes, as does the course
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Final Examination: