The literature of Europe in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries was dominated by two large-scale aesthetic movements: Romanticism, arising near the beginning of the nineteenth century, and Modernism, arising near the beginning of the twentieth. Both of these movements were "revolutionary," insisting on their departure from the past, and this similarity is part of the many continuities between the two. Through a study of poetry, prose, and narrative, this discussion course will investigate the nature of these two movements: their interest in common language, their use of symbolism, the relationship between democracy and art, and their formulations of the purposes of art. The larger aim is to sharpen students' ability to think critically about literary history and the relationships between individual writers and the broader energies of culture; considerable attention will be paid to writing and argument. Writers likely to be studied include Mary and Percy Shelley, Tennyson, Baudelaire, Yeats, Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Woolf, and Joyce. Requirements: four or five writing assignments. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 19 per section (expected: 19 per section). Two sections. (1700-1900 or Post-1900)