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Friday, August 29

First day: introductions and course outline.

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Monday, September 1

• "The Romantics and Their Contemporaries" (anthology 2)
  • To see a sampling of recent critical work on Romanticism indexed by topic, you can look at the Romantic Circles Praxis series.

In class today, I will give a broad introduction to Romanticism and explain how the texts we will read fit into the big picture. I will leave time for questions about the reading, so prepare one or two of those in advance.

Also, please go to the class discussion board and write a solid paragraph or two introducing yourself to the class. Aside from the obvious introductory function of this assignment, it also ensures that we deal with any technical problems before the responses begin.

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Wednesday, September 3

• Readings from "Perspectives: The Rights of Man and the Revolution Controversy" (anthology 56) by Helen Maria Williams, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, The Anti-Jacobin, and Hannah More. (In other words, read everything except the excerpts from William Godwin and Arthur Young.)
  • For a more directly historical perspective on the French Revolution, you can also see Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, a collaboration of the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University) and American Social History Project (City University of New York).

Prepare a comment or question for the post-lecture discussion.

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Friday, September 5

Here begins the Friday routine. Seminar A (Groups I, II, III, and IV) meets in FINE 243, and Group I submits responses by Thursday night. Seminar B meets in small groups, each of which will be led by member #1. All other members of Groups V, VI, VII, and VIII submit responses by Thursday night.

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Monday, September 8

• Anna Letitia Barbauld, "The Mouse's Petition to Dr. Priestley" (1773, anthology 31), "On a Lady's Writing" (1773, anthology 33), and "Washing-Day" (1797, anthology 35).
  • Two academic sites have general as well as text-specific information about Barbauld: The Anna Laetitia Barbauld Web Site and Anna Letitia Barbauld Prose Works.

Linking Passage Responses: Group I

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Wednesday, September 10

• William Wordsworth, Preface (anthology 356), "The Thorn" (anthology 343), and "Note to the Thorn" (anthology 348) from Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800)
  • The Lyrical Ballads Bicentenary Project is an excellent scholarly site. A lot of Wordsworthian information of varying quality dots the Internet; the best and most authoritative starting point is probably the Wordsworth section of the Voice of the Shuttle Romanticism page.

  • There is a new electronic scholarly edition of Lyrical Ballads produced by Romantic Circles and Cambridge University Press. The project is on the cutting edge of digital textual scholarship.

Linking Passage Responses: Group II

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Friday, September 12

Seminar B (Groups V, VI, VII, and VIII) meets in FINE 243, and Group V submits responses by Thursday night. Seminar A meets in small groups, each of which will be led by member #1. All other members of Groups I, II, III, and IV submit responses by Thursday night.

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Monday, September 15

• Wordsworth, "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (352) and "Old Man Travelling" (351) from Lyrical Ballads (1798)

• Selections from M.H. Abrams, "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric" (1965) and Marjorie Levinson, "Insight and Oversight: Reading 'Tintern Abbey'" (1986, handout)

Linking Passage Responses: Group III

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Wednesday, September 17

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1817 version, anthology 528) and the 1798 excerpt for comparison (anthology 526) from Lyrical Ballads

• Coleridge, excerpts from Biographia Literaria (1817, anthology 570)
  • The aforementioned Voice of the Shuttle Romanticism page also has a Coleriedge section, but you can also start with Marjorie A. Tiefert's Coleridge Archive.

Linking Passage Responses: Group IV

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Friday, September 19

Seminar A (Groups I, II, III, and IV) meets in FINE 243, and Group II submits responses by Thursday night. Seminar B meets in small groups, each of which will be led by member #2. All other members of Groups V, VI, VII, and VIII submit responses by Thursday night.

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Monday, September 22

• Percy Bysshe Shelley, from A Defence of Poetry (1821, anthology 800), "Mont Blanc" (1817, anthology 754) and "Sonnet: England in 1819" (1819, anthology 761)
  • The Keats-Shelley House is a good starting point for finding the digital Shelley. None of the amateur sites online can capture Shelley as well as his own words in Stuart Curran's e-text of the notes to Queen Mab.

Linking Passage Responses: Group V

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Wednesday, September 24

PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE
FOR STUDENTS WRITING PAPERS

• George Gordon, Lord Byron, Dedication (1819, anthology 668), Canto I (1819, anthology 672) and excerpt from Canto VII (1823, anthology 741) of Don Juan and "Prometheus" (1816, Frankenstein edition 286).
  • The Life and Work of Lord Byron on englishhistory.net provides good basic information. Aside from that site, there is remarkably little useful online material about Byron.

Linking Passage Responses: Group VI

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Friday, September 26

Seminar B (Groups V, VI, VII, and VIII) meets in FINE 243, and Group VI submits responses by Thursday night. Seminar A meets in small groups, each of which will be led by member #2. All other members of Groups I, II, III, and IV submit responses by Thursday night.

Note: The upcoming readings are particularly large. You might want to get through as much of the novel as possible over the weekend.

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Monday, September 29

• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818): Wolfson's introduction, the Preface, and Volume I.
  • This novel has attracted a lot of attention on the Net. Georgetown professor Martin Irvine's page is a good starting point.

Linking Passage Responses: Group VII

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Wednesday, October 1

• Shelley, Frankenstein, Volumes II and III

Linking Passage Responses: Group VIII

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Friday, October 3

FIRST EXAM/PAPER DATE

Section Page    Page 10.7.6    Page Section

Erik Simpson | simpsone@grinnell.edu
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