Dr Veronika Ruttkay
ruttkayveron@gmail.com
R5 031
Fri 11:00-12:30
Romanticism and the Idea of the Author
Course Schedule
1
Introduction; Constructing the author: Wordsworth
2
The author and his critics
from Wordsworth: [Prospectus to ‘The Recluse’]
from Francis Jeffrey: Review of ‘The Excursion’; Hazlitt: Review of ‘The Excursion’
3
Re-constructing the author
S. T. Coleridge: ‘To William Wordsworth’; from Biographia Literaria
4
Probing (male) authorship
Mary Robinson: ‘To the Poet Coleridge’; ‘The Haunted Beach’
from Memoirs of the Late Mrs Robinson
5
Critiquing romantic authorship
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
6
The dispersal of authorship
Mary Shelley (with Percy Shelley): The Original Frankenstein, ed. Charles E. Robinson (Oxford:
Bodleian, 2008)
Richard Brinsley Peake: Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein (1823)
7
The cult and the author
from Byron: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III
8
The author as reader
Keats: ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, ‘On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once
Again’
9
Memorializing the romantic author
Keats: [This living hand]
Shelley: ‘Here lieth One whose name was writ on water’; from Adonais
Browning: ‘Memorabilia’
Requirements:
Students will have to write a home essay of 6 to 8 pages (format: double-spaced, Times New Roman type, 12p
size) on one or more of the authors, texts or problems discussed in class. Planned titles should be announced 2
Dr Veronika Ruttkay
ruttkayveron@gmail.com
R5 031
Fri 11:00-12:30
weeks before the submission deadline. Those who attend regularly and give a short (approx. 20-min)
presentation during the term will receive their marks based on their home essay and presentation. Others will
have to take an oral exam for which familiarity with the assigned primary and secondary texts will be necessary.
Secondary reading (available from SEAS Library or MTAK) – those taking the exam should read at least 3
articles/book chapters from the following:
Abrams, M. H., The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1953)
Andrew Bennett, „The idea of the author”, in Nicholas Roe, ed., An Oxford Guide to Romanticism (Oxford:
OUP, 2005), 654-664
Andrew Bennett, Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity (Cambridge: CUP, 1999)
Butler, Marilyn, “The Rise of the Man of Letters: Coleridge”, in Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English
Literature and its Background 1780-1830 (Oxford: OUP, 1981)
McGann, Jerome, “Hero with a thousand faces: the rhetoric of Byronism”, in McGann, Byron and Romanticism,
ed. James Soderholm (Cambridge: CUP, 2002)
Murphy, Peter, Poetry as an Occupation and an Art in Britain 1760-1830 (Cambridge: CUP, 1993)
Newey, Vincent, “Authoring the Self: Childe Harold III”, in Jane Stabler, ed., Byron (Longman Critical
Readers) (London and New York: Longman, 1998), 152-165
Lucy Newlyn, Reading, Writing, and Romanticism: The Anxiety of Reception (Oxford: OUP, 2000)
Parrinder, Patrick, Authors and Authority: English and American Criticism 1750-1990 (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1991) – Chapters 2-3
Rajan, Tilottama, The Supplement of Reading: Figures of Understanding in Romantic Theory and Practice
(Cornell University Press, 1990)
Electronic editions and recommended websites:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge & William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads (1798-1805):
http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/LB/
The Samuel Taylor Coleridge Archive (includes ‘To William Wordsworth’):
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/
Coleridge: Biographia Literaria (Vol 1): http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/displayprose.cfm?prosenum=19
Peake: Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein: http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/peake/
Memoirs of Mary Robinson: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/robinson/memoirs/memoirs.html
British Women Romantic Poets, 1789 – 1832 (includes ‘The Haunted Beach’ by Robinson):
http://digital.lib.ucdavis.edu/projects/bwrp/
Mary Robinson's A Letter to the Women of England: http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/robinson/cover.htm