ENGL 329(S) British Romanticism: The Second Generation

This course will examine the second generation of British Romantic poets-George Gordon, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats-against the backdrop of their times. In addition to the major poetry and prose of Byron, Shelley, and Keats, our reading will include significant early and late texts by first-generation Romantic writers William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt; writing by other members of Byron's and Shelley's circle, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the letters and journals of Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont; and the work of popular essayists and poets of the age, including Thomas DeQuincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater and the poetry of Lucy Aiken, John Clare, Felicia Hemans, and Letitia Landon. Our discussions will explore the forms of pleasure and illumination these various works can offer us. We will also be investigating the ways in which Byron, Shelley, and Keats shape and come to be identified with a "Romantic" aesthetic that exists in a complex relation to the defining first generation of Romantic poets, to the changing social and cultural values of Regency England, and to a modern print culture. Requirements: two 5-page essays and one 10-page essay. Prerequisite: English 101. Enrollment limited to 25. (1800-1900)

Hour: SWANN