10:10a-11:00a MWF (30) 3 cr

The Romantic Period is known for both the unprecedented explosion of brilliant lyric poetry (by the likes of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats) and also for the emergence of a revolutionary politics which changed the nature of society, introducing notions such as individual liberty, innate human rights and the dignity of cultural difference. Many of the canonical Romantic writers participated in the political upheavals of the time, and we will consider their contributions to the ongoing debate. But we will also consider the ways in which alternative ideas about liberty and individuality were at work in the period, ideas which question and sometimes refute the notions of the canonical writers. As a counterpoint to the canonical part of the course, we will thus also be considering the work of women poets such as Charlotte Smith and Anna Barbauld, as well as the novels of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen, and the early slave narrative by Olaudah Equiano. These works will provide us with notions of individual liberty that will ring interesting changes on the more familiar ideas of the canonical writers. Texts will include a Romantics anthology and a few novels. Students will write 3 papers and do a mid- term and final.