This class will revisit the old critical question, "What is Romanticism?" We will read a range of British Romantic-era texts: poetry and prose of the canonized Romantic poets (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats) together with work by their popular contemporaries, including poets Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, and Felicia Hemans, and essayists William Hazlitt and Thomas DeQuincey. We will ask: to what extent are at least some of these authors self-consciously shaping the literary movement we now call "Romanticism"? How do they seek to define this movement, and what might they be defining it against? In what ways do "Romantic" aesthetics and ideology shape and/or react to the broader political, social and economic culture of early-nineteenth-century England? Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: two 5-page papers and one 10-page paper. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 25). (1700-1900 or Criticism)