The Later Romantic Period

The later Romantic period, roughly 1815 (Waterloo) to 1837 (Queen Victoria), is an enigma to me. The writers in this later era were responding to their radical predecessors -- Wordsworth, Baillie, Smith, Robinson, Coleridge, and Blake -- who had hoped that the French Revolution (1789) would usher in the millennium, the thousand years of peace foretold by the Bible in Revelation to precede the coming of Heaven on Earth. These hopes had been (for some) destroyed by the Reign of Terror (1793): instead of peace, revolutionaries brought further abuses. Radicals such as William Godwin were able to explain why the revolutionaries guillotined so many people: having suffered brutality at the hands of the aristocrats who were now at their mercy, they responded in kind, violently, reacting in ways that they had learned to act from their brutal aristocratic oppressors. Godwin believed that society could be improved gradually, through education and amelioration of the emotions; this project of improvement gave writers lots of work to do! I find these later writers an enigma because some of them continued to hope for radical reform of society and to work toward it, while others reacted conservatively to the threat posed by violent revolutionaries, retracting their faith in humanity, depending more upon social institutions and government regulation for social peace than on enlightenment -- more, that is, on force than on the good will of an educated public. And these writers are an enigma because some of them seem to have had both reactions simultaneously! What are their theories about how Heaven might be brought about on Earth? Do they believe it possible, despair of it -- or both, at different moments? How do their responses to revolutionary hopes contribute to forming what literary critics often call "the modern subject" -- in lay terms, a sense of what it means and feels like to be a "self" that is recognizable to us as akin to our own. That is, Byron seems psychologically real to me in a way that Alexander Pope writing a century earlier (among Byron's favorite authors, incidentally) does not. Of course Pope was real! It's not simply that I cannot identify with his interests; he seems to be structured differently somehow. What happened? How did political aspirations, and perhaps their demise, help to construct the interior space we now feel to be our own, personal, individual, true, sincere, deep selves -- represented by these James-Dean-like male authors who waged war against society and died young? Can reading the women writers, who didn't die young and who may not so vigorously privilege individuality nor promote their own distinctive personalities in print, give us a better sense of how these men came to represent the modern individual?

Course Goals

The goals in this class are threefold:

1. to learn how to write essays about literary texts. To do this, we will complete six assignments from Schilb and Clifford’s book Ways of Making Literature Matter. Those assignments are about poems given in this text, but in this class you will select a Romantic poem from among those we have already read and discussed in class to do the assignments.
2. to learn how to read literature thoughtfully by first selecting what one wants to read, then finding thought-provoking criticism to read with it, and finally, finding ways of discussing it with others.
3. to study five writers intensively. The five writers we will study are Percy Bysshe Shelley, radical political poet and idealist intellectual; John Keats, the poet who might have rivaled Shakespeare had he not died at age 26 of tuberculosis; Felicia Hemans, one of the most popular poets of her day whose work is just beginning to be taken seriously by scholars; George Gordon, Lord Byron, the poet who was considered “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”; Mary Prince, a slave who wrote an autobiographical narrative of the abuses she suffered, and then also was attacked for lying about those abuses; and finally Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, married to Percy, daughter of two of the most notorious politically radical figures of the day, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.

Required Reading

Felicia Hemans, Siege of Valencia (eds. Wolfson and Fay)
Felicia Hemans, Records of Woman (ed. Feldman)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose
John Keats, Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats (eds. Hirsch, Pollock)
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Lord Byron: The Major Works (ed. Jerome McGann)
Mary Shelley, Valperga
Mary Prince, History of Mary Prince
Diana Hacker, A Pocket Style Manual 3rd or 4th edition
Reader at Oxford Copy Shop.

Required Work

1. Quizzes (P / F)
2. Leading Class Discussions:
   You will lead class discussions in groups of 3, for each author beginning with John Keats. Select a day that you would like to lead discussion; I’ll let you know which people are in your group, giving you all each other’s email addresses. The three of you should meet as soon as possible, decide which texts (10 pages of poetry; 20 pages of prose -- each) you would like to present together, and then email me (mandellc@muohio.edu) with the text titles so that I can suggest critical essays for you to read. It may take time for you to get these essays, especially if you must Ohiolink the books, so be sure to get this done well in advance. Each of you will lead class discussion for one text, giving the class a handout that distills from two critical essays you read on your own anything that will promote class discussion. To prepare, fill out a Response Assignment (in Blackboard) for the poem, the essay or supplementary materials required on the syllabus (if there are any), and the two critical essays that you have decided to read: you will turn those response assignments in since they, as well as your class handout, will partly determine your grade. Your grade will also partly be determined by the quality of class discussion, so make certain to read “Class Discussion” in “Course Information” – and remember that questions requiring a “yes” or “no” answer most often halt discussions!
3. Freewriting Ideas on the discussion board; post 2 to 3 paragraphs on one idea, issue, criticism about each author = 6 total. Do so by the end of the time we spend discussing that author. Grades: Check + = 95; Check = 85; Check - = 75.
4. Assignments (Schilb and Clifford’s writing exercises, 6 total) to be turned in throughout the semester, ideally done on your paper topic, but not necessarily: choose any poem or text we have read so far, and then do what they ask.
5. Individual Paper Presentations:
• Present your main argument
• Give class a handout of the quotations you will use
6. Final Paper (7 pp. double-spaced, typed)
   

Grades

10%	Quizzes		A+	97-100	C	73-76
			A	93-96	C-	70-72
30%	Lead Class Discussion		A-	90-92	D+	67-69
			B+	87-89	D	63-66
35%	Freewriting and Assignments		B	83-86	D-	60-62
			B-	80-82	F	0-59
25%	Paper Presentation and Final Paper		C+	77-79

Schedule of Readings and Assignments:
Due on the date next to which they are listed

T 1/13 Introduction

R 1/15

Schilb and Clifford, “Reading and Thinking,” in Reader

Assignment No. 1: Write a brief essay in which you summarize your history as a writer. What are the main kinds of writing you have done? What successes and problems have you experienced as a writer? How might this course help your writing most?

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (hereafter called “Norton”), pp. 109-110: “Ozymandias”
pp. 298-301: “Ode to the West Wind”

T 1/20

P. B. Shelley, Norton pp. 92-100: “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” “Mont
Blanc”
p.327: “Lift Not the Painted Veil”
pp. 570-579 Wasserman
pp. 616-626: “Shelley’s Lyric Art”
Begin “A Defence of Poetry” Norton pp. 509-515, to section 9

R 1/22

P. B. Shelley, Norton pp. 92, 315-327: “To Wordsworth,” “Mask of
Anarchy,” “England in 1819”
pp. 722-734: Wolfson
“A Defence of Poetry,” Norton pp. 515-521, to sec. 20.
Liu and Chandler in Reader

T 1/27

P. B. Shelley, Norton pp. 71-90: “Alastor”
pp. 654-62: Ferber
pp. 286-296: “The Sensitive Plant”
Morton in Reader
“A Defence of Poetry,” Norton pp. 521-528, to sec. 31

R 1/29

P. B. Shelley, Norton pp. 407-427: “Adonais”
pp. 753-760: Scrivener
Finish “A Defence of Poetry,” Norton pp. 528-535
All P. B. Shelley postings to Discussion Board due by this date

T 2/3

John Keats, in Hirsch, ed., pp. 3-10: “I stood tip-toe upon a little hill”;
pp. 236-240: “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
pp. 489-496 (Letters, up to end of John Taylor May 1818)
Assignment No. 2

R 2/5

Keats pp.
Burke in Reader
pp. 497-501 (Letters, up to end of Woodhouse 1818)

T 2/10

Keats pp.
Levinson in Reader
pp. 502-507 (Letter to his brothers, 1819)

R 2/12

Keats pp.
pp. 508-513 (to end of Letters)
All Keats postings to Discussion Board by this date.

T 2/17 – No Class – EXCHANGE DAY

R 2/19 Felicia Hemans, Records of Woman pp. pp.29-33: “Properzia Rossi”
pp. 57-62: “Indian Woman’s Death Song,” “Joan of Arc in Rheims”
pp. 84-86: “Grave of a Poetess
Assignment No. 3

T 2/24

Hemans, Records of Woman pp.
Feldman in Reader

R 2/26

Hemans, Siege of Valencia pp. 39-81 (Scene 1)
Appendix E: Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid (pp. 262-285)

T 3/2

Hemans, Siege of Valencia pp. 81-187 (Scenes 2-6)
Wolfson in Reader

R 3/4

Hemans, Siege of Valencia pp. 189-239 (Scenes 7-9)
Appendix G. Reviews and Receptions, pp. 288-313
All Hemans postings to Discussion Board due by this date

T 3/9

George Gordon, Lord Byron, in McGann, ed., pp. 1: “Farewell to a Lady”
pp. 15-16: “Song,” “Written Beneath a Picture”
pp. 104-145: Canto III of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Assignment No. 4

R 3/11

Byron pp.
Hazlitt in Reader

S P R I N G B R E A K

T 3/23

Byron pp.
Makdisi in Reader
All Byron postings to Discussion Board by this date.

R 3/25

Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince pp. 55-94

T 3/30

Prince pp. 95-135
Bush in Reader
Assignment No. 5

R 4/1

Prince pp. 136-166
All Prince postings to Discussion Board by this date

T 4/6

Mary Shelley, excerpts from Frankenstein
and begin Valperga pp. 1-84
Woodard in Reader

R 4/8

Mary Shelley, Valperga pp. 85-158
Assignment No. 6

T 4/13

M. Shelley pp. 159-233
Lokke in Reader

R 4/15 M. Shelley pp. 234-303

T 4/20

M. Shelley pp. 304-381
Lew in Reader
All M. Shelley Postings to Discussion Board by this date

R 4/22 Paper Presentations: 5 minutes each, last name ending in A through K

T 4/27 Paper Presentations: 5 minutes each, L-Q
Class Evaluations

R 4/29 Paper Presentations: 5 minutes each, R-Z

Your Final Paper is due by the time of our Final Exam:
Friday, May 7, 7:30 a.m.