ENGL4500: Romantic Literature (49611)

Legette, Casie

TR 2 :20 PM

Park Hall 0144


In this course, we will read literature from the British Romantic Period (1785-1832). This period in British history was a time of immense upheaval. The poems, novels, essays, and plays which we will read in this class engage directly with the overwhelming changes Britain was undergoing, thanks to the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, a twenty-year long war with France, and the slow struggle to abolish slavery. These cultural and political revolutions were matched by significant changes in literature. The Romantic Period saw a new kind of poetry, as well as the rise of the novel, a genre which emerged only a few decades before. We will read texts by Mary Wollstonecraft, Phillis Wheatley Peters, William Wordsworth, William Blake, Oladuah Equiano, Samuel T. Coleridge, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Felicia Hemans, Letitia E. Landon, Mary Prince, George Gordon, Lord Byron, John Keats, and more. This course will introduce students to a range of genres, furthering their close reading skills in poetry, essays, and the novel.