(Literature and Liberty: 1776-1918)

This course will be a broad survey of political and military literature, mostly poetry, both British and American, from the time of the American Revolution to the First World War. In keeping with one definition of our 600-level courses, it will be an exploratory colloquium rather than a course pursuing a pre-defined thesis or period. We have all become adept at recognizing political and ideological issues in texts that seem at first glance to have none (cf. recent readings of Keat’s “To Autumn”). In this course, instead, we will look at overtly political, militaristic literature, including protest and propaganda pieces (e.g., “God Shave the King,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade”). I myself am currently interested in the relations between British Romanticism and the agitation for republican reform in Britain in the 1790s, but this will only be one aspect of the course. Other topics or units may include: British and American writings for and against independence for the American colonies, the French Revolution in British literature (a course in itself), representations of Napoleon in British culture, post-Napoleonic Reform writings (Peterloo to 1832), literature of the American Civil War (especially Whitman’s “Drum-Taps” and Melville’s “Battle-Pieces”), the Boer War (Kipling), and the poetry and perhaps a novel of World War I and the “Lost Generation.”

L641 is generally defined as “Romantic and Victorian Literature.” This version of it will work within those general parameters, but with forays outside England, in keeping with our revised exam and course-requirement structures. It will cover a “long” 19th century in a series (say, six?) of topically defined units. More than mere chronology, however, the course will follow an arc of enthusiasm for liberty and democracy in writings in English, from Emerson’s “shot heard round the world” and Wordsworth’s “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” to the widespread disillusionment with civilization and “progress” after World War I, as Europe finally collapsed under the contradictions of the synthesis created at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Along the way, we will accent the course’s thematic approach with brief looks at new theoretical paradigms (e.g., New Historicism) affecting our construction of both the 19th century and of Literature as a social act.

Since the course is mainly for reading and wide-ranging discussion, I would rather not test participants’ engagement by examination. Instead, I propose two shortish papers (ca. 10 pages), one for each half the semester.

I very much encourage prospective students to talk to me about the course before registering, especially to suggest additional readings that might profitably be fit into the above parameters.