English Literature of the Romantic Period, 1798-1832

Overview

Course abstract: This is intended as a survey of one of the most significant periods in English literature, the Romantic Age. It provides the socio-cultural backgrounds, key features of the poetry and fiction and an introduction to some of the key poets and poems from the period. In addition it also offers a brief account of the principal aesthetic theories that informed the poetry, and an introduction to the visual arts of the period.

ABOUT INSTRUCTOR: Prof. Pramod K Nayar teaches at the Dept of English, the University of Hyderabad. Among his most recent books are Bhopal's Ecological Gothic (Lexington, 2017), Human Rights and Literature (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017), The Extreme in Contemporary Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). He is the editor of English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology (Orient BlackSwan, 2013).Forthcoming is Brand Postcolonial: The 'Third World' Text and the Global (de Gruyter)

Syllabus

Publishing, Literacy and Reading - I.
Publishing, Literacy and Reading - II Literacy, Reading and the Audience.
Empire.
Empire - II.
Science.
European Romanticism Sensibility.
Dissent and Revolution.
The Debate on Rights.
Nature and the Environment.
The Self and Imagination.
Fiction of the Romantic Period.
Jane Austen.
Criticism: Coleridge and Wordsworth.
The Historical Novel.
The Gothic Novel.
Romantic Poetry 1: Romanticism and sentiment Introduction: Sensibility and Passion.
Romantic Poetry 1:Sensibility and Passion.
Romantic Poetry 2:William Wordsworth(1770-1850).
Romantic Poetry 1: William Blake(1757-1827).
English Romantic Poetry 1:Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Introduction: Nature and the Environment.
Wordsworth.
Coleridge.
Shelley.
Keats and Byron.
Romantic Poetry 3: Aesthetics Shelley.
Romantic Poetry 3: Aesthetics Blake.
Romantic Poetry 3: Aesthetics Wordsworth.
Romantic Poetry 3: Aesthetics Introduction: Sublime and Picturesque Aesthetics.
Romantic Poetry 3: Visual arts and the Romantics.
Romantic Poetry 4: Politics: Race, Empire, Tyranny.
Romantic Poetry 4: Politics Abolitionist Poetry.
Romantic Poetry 4: Politics Wordsworth and Shelley.
Politics Introduction Gender & Class.
Romantic Poetry 4: Politics John Clare.
Romantic Literature: Empire and Orientalism Introduction 1: Romanticism, the Empire and the Other.
Romantic Literature: Empire and Orientalism Introduction 2: Romanticism, the Empire and the Other.
Romantic Literature: Empire and Orientalism 3 Prose: Thomas de Quincey.
Romantic Literature: Empire and Orientalism 5 Felicia Hemans.
Romantic Literature: Empire and Orientalism 4 Byron.