Autumn semester, 2011
AN 32006 BA 07
Course syllabus
Title: British Romantic Literature
Format: seminar
Year: 3 (BA)
Teacher: István Rácz (e-mail: racz.istvan@arts.unideb.hu)
Room: 119
Time: Wed 8.00—9.40
Office hours: Mon 10.00—11.00, Wed 10.00—11.00 (Room 114)
Grading will be based on your regular performance in class (i.e. your active participation in
class discussion), your in-class essay (see week 8), and your take-home essay. The take-home
essay should be 5-6 typewritten pages (size 12, double-spaced), and should meet all formal
requirements including the appropriate documentation of your sources. No plagiarism will be
tolerated. You must document all your quotations whether the quotation is verbatim or not.
Please note: you must use at least two printed (i.e. non-internet) texts of criticism to
support your argument. Suggested topics can be found as an appendix to this syllabus. The
deadline for submitting this essay is 30 November.
Late submission policy: If you submit your essay later than the deadline, but still before 11
December, your grade will be lower. No essay will be accepted and no credit will be given if
you miss this second deadline.
Texts: anthologies of 19th-century poetry available in the library
course packets (see below)
texts distributed in class
Mary Shelley. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre
Note: I will make it sure that all texts are available from the institute library, at least in a few
copies. It is, however, the student’s responsibility to get hold of the text before each class, and
make xerox copies if necessary. The two novels on the list can be either bought or borrowed.
Please DO NOT come to class without the text to be discussed. In case you have any
difficulty in getting hold of any text, let me know well in advance.
Some texts will be available from various course packets in the library. These are indicated in
the week-to-week schedule with the following abbreviations:



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Topic and Form in 19th-century British Poetry (TF)
Romantic Criticism (RC)
Romantic Criticism 2 (RC2)
Prometheus in English Literature (PEL)
WEEK
DATE
TOPICS AND ASSIGNMENTS
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7/9
Registration week. Students are required to borrow the
course packets and do the reading for week 1.
1
14/9
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. “ “My Heart Leaps Up”, “We are
Seven”, “The Solitary Reaper”, “A slumber did my spirit seal”
CRITICISM: Stuart Curran. “Romantic poetry: why and
wherefore?” In: Stuart Curran, ed. The Cambridge Companion
to British Romanticism. Cambridge: CUP, 1993. 216—235.
Text: TF
2
21/9
S.T. COLERIDGE. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
CRITICISM: Blackstone. “The Ancient Mariner”
Text: RC
3
28/9
JOHN KEATS. Isabella, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode to
Psyche”
CRITICISM: Earl Wasserman. “The Ode on a Grecian Urn”.
In: Keats. Twentieth Century Views ser. Englewood Cliffs: New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1964. 113-141.
Excerpt from Andrew Motion’s Keats. London:
Faber, 1997.
Thomas Bullfinch on Psyche. In: The Golden
Age of Myth and Legend. London: Senate, 1994.
Text: RC, RC2, TF
4
5/10
MARY SHELLEY. Frankenstein
CRITICISM: Brian Hodgkiss. “Introduction” to Frankenstein.
Genoa: Cideb, 1994. IX-LVI.
Text: PEL
5
12/10
MARY SHELLEY. Frankenstein
CRITICISM: Margaret Homans. “Bearing Demons:
Frankenstein’s Circumvention of the Maternal”
Text: PEL
6
19/10
IN-CLASS ESSAY
7
26/10
P.B. SHELLEY. “Ode to the West Wind”, “The Cloud”, “Song
to the Men of England”, “England in 1819”
CRITICISM: Neville Rogers. “Shelley and the West
Wind”
Text: RC
8
2/11
no teaching, consultation week
9
9/11
LORD BYRON. Don Juan, Canto I
10
16/11
LORD BYRON. Manfred
CRITICISM: Andrew Rutherford. “Manfred”. In: Byron. A
Critical Study
Text: PEL
11
23/11
CHARLOTTE BRONTË. Jane Eyre
CRITICISM: Margaret Howard Blom. “Jane Eyre”
Text: RC
12
30/11
Children in Romanticism
WILLIAM BLAKE. “Annotations to Berkeley’s Siris”, “The
Chimney Sweeper” (Songs of Innocence), “The Chimney
Sweeper” (Songs of Experience)
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. “My Heart Leaps Up”, “We are
Seven”
GEORGE ELIOT. Excerpts from The Mill on the Floss and
Silas Marner
Text: TF
TAKE-HOME ESSAY DUE!
13
7/12
Animals in Romanticism
WILLIAM BLAKE. “The Fly”, “The Lamb”, “The Tyger”
P.B. SHELLEY. “To a Skylark”
Text: TF
14
14/12
GRADING AND EVALUATION
Appendix
A suggestive list for take-home essays
Note: This is only a suggestive list. In case you wish to write about a different topic within the
scope of romantic literature, you are welcome to do so, but please discuss it with me first. You
are not allowed to re-submit an essay that you wrote for a different seminar.
1. Nature in Wordsworth and in Shelley
2. A comparative discussion of Wordsworth’s “The Daffodils” and “The Solitary
Reaper”
3. Animals in Blake and in Coleridge
4. Dramatic situations in Coleridge’s poetry
5. Byron’s Romanticism in his lyric poetry
6. Byron’s Manfred and Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein (A comparison of the two
characters)
7. The sonnet in Keats
8. Keats’s narrative poetry
9. Figures of speech in Shelley
10. Dramatization in Shelley’s poetry
11. The representation of women in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
12. Jane Eyre as a Bildungsroman
13. Literary convention and innovation in Jane Eyre