Hong Kong Shue Yan University
Department of English Language & Literature
1 st term, 2015-2016
Course Title
Course Code
Year of Study
: Romantics and Romantic Sceptics
: ENG 484
: 4 th
Number of Credits
Duration in Weeks
: 3
: 15
Contact Hours Per Week : Lecture (2 Hours)
: Tutorial (1 Hour)
Pre-requisite(s) : NIL
Prepared by : Dr. Robert Kiely
Course Aims
The course covers the Romantic period in Britain, a period characterised by radical ideas and rebellion against tradition and convention, both in politics and in literature. The syllabus contains a broad selection of texts by the most prominent poets, novelists, and thinkers of the time. This course aims to give students a sense of what the period looked like and a feel for the ideas it established about poetry, society and nature, which are still with us. Towards the end of the semester, we’ll be concentrating on how Romantic literature generated many of the ecological ideas that are with us today.
Course Outcomes, Teaching Activities and Assessment
Course Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
Upon completion of this course successful participants will be able to:
ILO1
ILO2
ILO3
ILO4 identify the characteristics of the British Romantic movement show understanding of the historical, social, and intellectual context of the
Romantic period describe the literature and culture of the Romantic period
IL05
ILO6 be able to discuss and exemplify the contrasts between romantic and neo-classical values in general and romantic and realistic novels in particular demonstrate their ability to apply what they have learned in oral presentations and written term papers identify 21st-century analogues to their own lives in the Romantic period, especially in the aspect of nature and ecology
TLA1
TLA2
TLA3
TLA4
TLA5
Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs)
Lectures to introduce writers, texts, themes, literary concerns, and analytical techniques
In class discussion
Group presentation
Written responses to selected poem(s)
Term paper
AT1
Assignment Tasks (ATs)
Group Presentation
An oral presentation of 45 minutes on the topic of the week or a selected topic
20%
1

AT3
AT4 agreed between the presentation group and the instructor
Term Paper
A term paper written on a topic chosen by the student at the end of the semester.
The length of the paper should be around 3,000 words.
Final Examination
Open-book format examination
30%
50%
Alignment of Course Intended Learning Outcomes, Teaching and Learning Activities and Assessment Tasks
Course Intended Learning
Outcomes
Teaching and Learning
Activities
Assessment Tasks
ILO1 TLA 1, 2 AT 1, 2
ILO2
ILO3
TLA 2, 3, 4, 5
TLA 2, 3, 5
AT 1, 2, 3
AT 1, 3
ILO4
ILO5
ILO6
Course Outline
TLA2, 3, 5
TLA3, 5
TLA2, 3, 5
AT 1, 3
AT1, 3
AT1, 3
Week 1 Introduction to the Romantic Period and Romanticism
Excerpts from Meyer H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).
Small selection from Binfield, Kevin, ed., Writings of the Luddites (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2015).
Week 2 William Blake
Selected poems from Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794)
Week 3 William Wordsworth
Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798); “Ode: Imitations of Immortality”; “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey”; “My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold”; Selection from The Prelude
Week 4 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; “Kubla Khan”; “The Eolian Harp”; and “Frost at
Midnight”
Week 5 Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats
Percy Bysshe, Shelley, “To a Skylark”; “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”; John Keats, “Ode to a
Grecian Urn”; “Ode on Melancholy”; “To Autumn”
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Week 6 Romanticism and Gender
Mary Wollstonecraft, excerpts from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
Week 7
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847)
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights continued
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights continued
Reading Week
Week 11 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
Week 12 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein continued
Week 13 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein continued
Week 14 Romanticism, Nature and Ecology
Bate, Jonathan. (2000) “The Picturesque Environment.” The Song of the Earth (London: Picador,
2000), 119-152.
Week 15 Reading Week
Academic Honesty
You are expected to do your own work. Dishonesty in fulfilling any assignment undermines the learning process and the integrity of your college degree. Engaging in dishonest or unethical behavior is forbidden and will result in disciplinary action, specifically a failing grade on the assignment with no opportunity for resubmission. A second infraction will result in an F for the course and a report to College officials.
Examples of prohibited behavior are:
 Cheating – an act of deception by which a student misleadingly demonstrates that s/he has mastered information on an academic exercise. Examples include:
 Copying or allowing another to copy a test, quiz, paper, or project
 Submitting a paper or major portions of a paper that has been previously submitted for another class without permission of the current instructor
 Turning in written assignments that are not your own work (including homework)
 Plagiarism – the act of representing the work of another as one’s own without giving credit. o Failing to give credit for ideas and material taken from others o Representing another’s artistic or scholarly work as one’s own
 Fabrication – the intentional use of invented information or the falsification of research or other findings with the intent to deceive
To comply with the University’s policy, the term paper has to be submitted to VeriGuide.
Resources
Principal Readings
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights, ed. Pauline Nestor (London: Penguin, 2003).
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus, ed. Marilyn Butler (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008).
Please note that these are the recommended editions, but any edition at all is fine.
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Supplementary and Recommended Reading
For some historical context around Romanticism, see Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution:
1789-1848 (London: Abacus, 1988) is very useful, particularly the section on the Arts.
A really useful anthology is Duncan Wu, ed., Romanticism: An Anthology (London: Blackwell,
2012). Some others include: Simon Bainbridge, Romanticism: a sourcebook (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008). Harriet Devine Jump, ed., Women’s Writing of the Romantic Period 1789-1836: An
Anthology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997).
Some useful introductions and overviews of literary criticism on this period include: David
Stevens, Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); P. O’Flinn, How to Study
Romantic Poetry 2 nd Edition (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2001); Kelvin Everest, English Romantic Poetry:
An Introduction to the Historical Context and the Literary Scene (Milton Keynes: Open University Press,
1990); Aidan Day, Romanticism (London: Routledge, 2010); Michael Ferber, Romanticism: A Very
Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Duncan Wu, ed., A Companion to
Romanticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999); John Richard Watson, English Poetry of the Romantic Period
1789-1830 (London: Longman, 1992); Miriam L. Wallace, ed., Enlightening Romanticism, Romancing
the Enlightenment: British novels from 1750 to 1832 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate., 2009).
Below I include some recommendations about single authors – not all of those studied on the course.
If you are thinking of writing on William Blake, I highly recommend looking at William Blake:
The Complete Illuminated Books (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013), a proper transcription of the plates is available in somewhat-small print at the back. Some other helpful editions include: Songs
of Innocence & of Experience (London: Tate, 2007); The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake, ed.
David V. Erdman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008); The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell, ed. Michael Phillips (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2011); Poetical Sketches (London: Tate, 2007);
Seen in My Visions: A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures, ed. Martin Myrone (London: Tate, 2009).
If you are thinking of writing on William Wordsworth, it may be useful to look at some commentaries available by the prominent UK poet J. H. Prynne. Also of interest would be the final essay in Keston Sutherland, Stupefaction: A Radical Anatomy of Phantoms (Calcutta: Seagull,
2011).
For a wonderful overview of critical approaches to Frankenstein, see Graham Allen, Shelley’s
Frankenstein (London: Continuum, 2008). See also: Betty Bennet and Stuart Curran, eds., Mary
Shelley in her Times (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2000); John Williams, Mary
Shelley – A Literary Life (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).
For pointers on sources for any other writer on this course (for reasons of space and time, these recommendations and pointers make many omissions), just email rmdkiely@gmail.com
.
More general background here: M. Mulvey-Roberts, Handbook to Gothic Literature (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1998); Meyer H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic
Literature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973); Ronald Carter and John McRae, The Routledge History
of Literature in English (London: Routledge, 2001).
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