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 literary history 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 discuss poetry and prose from the period, showing the impact of the French Revolution on British intellectual and public life in the 1790s, as well as the agitation for political reform in the first decades of the nineteenth century. We will examine the formal and stylistic innovations of these writers and the relation of their works to the profound social changes they document, investigating their philosophical, aesthetic, and expanding colonial contexts. The goal is to construct an effective working definition of the term “Romanticism” that comes to grips with the achievement and diversity of this group of writers/artists, and to engage with the impact of their works on cultural life and critical debates over the last century. Primary texts will be drawn from William Blake, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. Class readings will also include recent critical studies of the history, political context, and aesthetic debates of this revolutionary era.

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
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).