ENG 220 - Studies in British Culture

British Romanticism

The period 1789-1832 was one of dramatic political, social, and industrial upheaval in Europe. In response British writers and artists produced some of the most powerful representations in English literature of hopes for liberty and progress, and of pure transcendent joy, as well as some of its sharpest attacks on oppression and convention. This class will focus primarily on the poetry of the period, along with select fiction and prose texts, examining the formal and stylistic innovations of Romantic authors and the relation of their works to the profound social and political changes they document. Primary readings will be drawn from the following: William Blake, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Keats, and Emily Bronte.

Visual Narrative, Hogarth to Blake

18^th and early 19^th century England saw remarkable developments in both literature and the visual arts. Painters and printmakers along with poets and novelists developed innovative forms of representation, taking as their subjects the rapidly modernizing rural and urban landscape, especially that of London; social types and hierarchies, from aristocratic circles to the criminal underworld; and salient details of political, intellectual, and domestic life. Two dominant figures here are William Hogarth and William Blake, whose print series and illuminated books embody the concerns, aspirations, and technical possibilities of the era. Along with their texts and images we will also study the work of their contemporaries, with a primary focus on how narration operates across different forms and media. Other artists and writers whose work will be considered will be drawn from among: Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, John Gay, Oliver Goldsmith, Laurence Sterne, Thomas Gainsborough, George Stubbs, Henry Fuseli, Thomas Rowlandson, and Ann Radcliffe.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I - Arts, Literature, & Philosophy
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes:

Not all topics offered every year.
Review schedule of classes for availability.
Review descriptions for specific applicability to department requirements.
British Romanticism: This course applies toward the department’s pre-1900 requirement.
Visual Narrative, Hogarth to Blake: This course applies toward the department’s pre-1900 requirement.

Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).