BRITISH LITERATURE (2nd YEAR, 1st semester)

ROMANTICISM

Course and seminar coordinator: Dr. Lucia Opreanu

Duration: 7 weeks

Lectures:
1. Introductory course: The Romantic Age
2. The poetry of William Blake
3. The poetry of William Wordsworth
4. The poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
5. The poetry of George Gordon Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley
6. The poetry of John Keats
7. The early nineteenth century novel: Jane Austen

Seminars:
1. A selection of poems by William Blake and William Wordsworth
2. A selection of poems by George Gordon Byron and John Keats
3. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary texts:

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: Everyman, 1997.

Blake, William Blake. Selected Poems. London: Penguin Books, 1996. [“Introduction” to Songs of
Innocence, “Introduction” to Songs of Experience, “The Lamb”, “The Tyger”, “The Garden of Love”,
“The Sick Rose”, “London”]
Byron, George Gordon. Complete Poetical Works. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
[Manfred (Incantation), “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year”, Don Juan (Canto the First)]
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Poetry
Library, 1994. “Kubla Khan”]
Keats, John. The Works of John Keats. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1994. [Endymion (Book
I), La Belle Dame Sans Merci, “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “To Autumn”]
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Poetry Library,
2002. [“Ode to the West Wind”, excerpt from Prometheus Unbound]
Wordsworth, William. The Works of William Wordsworth. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1994.
[Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, “The Solitary Reaper”]

Secondary texts:

McGann, Jerome J. "Poetry." An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age. British Culture 1776-1832. Ed.
Iain McCalman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 270-279
Wu, Duncan (ed.) "Introduction.” Romanticism. An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. pp. xxx-xxxvii
SEMINAR MARK FORMULA:

3 points SEMINAR ATTENDANCE (1p x 3 seminars) + 2 points COURSE ATTENDANCE (0.33p x 6

lectures) + 5 points ASSIGNMENTS (between 2 and 5 topics of your choice)

1. Discuss the Romantic fascination with:

* mythology (identify and analyse one or more mythological heroes favoured by the Romantics)
* the Bible (identify and analyse one or more Biblical episodes alluded to in Romantic poetry)
* the Orient (identify and analyse references to one or more exotic locations and characters in
Romantic poetry)
* nature (identify and analyse one or more descriptions of landscapes in Romantic poetry)
* love (identify and analyse one or more descriptions of love in Romantic poetry)
* suffering (identify and analyse one or more descriptions of physical or mental suffering in
Romantic poetry)

2. Analyse a Byronic hero of your choice (Childe Harold, Manfred, Don Juan).

3. Discuss the title of one of Jane Austen’s novels and its relevance to the text.

4. Discuss the significance of social conventions / social status / personal finances in a Jane Austen
novel of your choice.

5. Identify and compare the different types of marriages in a Jane Austen novel of your choice.

6. Compare and contrast one of the following pairs of protagonists (or another pair of your choice
from one of Jane Austen’s novels): Elinor and Marianne Dashwood / John Willoughby and Colonel
Brandon / Edward and Robert Ferrars / Elizabeth Bennet and Caroline Bingley / Mr. Darcy and Mr.
Wickham / Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley / Emma Woodhouse and Jane Fairfax.

7. Analyse one of the following couples (or another couple of your choice from one of Jane
Austen’s novels) in terms of personal identity, evolution, relationship coordinates: Elinor
Dashwood and Edward Ferrars / Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby / Marianne Dashwood
and Colonel Brandon / Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy / Mr. and Mrs. Bennet / Emma Woodhouse
and Mr. Knightley.

[approximately 500 words – 2.5 points each]

8. Contextualise and comment:
poetic texts: approximately 250 words – 1 point each; narrative texts: approximately 300 words – 2
points each
And I pluck'd a hollow reed   For oft, when on my couch I lie
And I made a rural pen   In vacant or in pensive mood,
And I stain'd the water clear   They flash upon that inward eye
And I wrote my happy songs  Which is the bliss of solitude;
Every child may joy to hear. And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who present, past, and future sees; Behold her, single in the field,
Whose ears have heard Yon solitary Highland Lass!
The Holy Word, Reaping and singing by herself;
That walked among the ancient trees, Stop here, or gently pass!
Calling the lapsed soul,
And weeping in the evening dew; Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright O listen! for the Vale profound
In the forests of the night Is overflowing with the sound.
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
In what distant deeps or skies The music in my heart I bore,
Burnt the fire of thine eyes? Long after it was heard no more.
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire? Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it
takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears, In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
Did he smile his work to see? A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Did he who made the lamb make thee? Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
In every cry of every man, Down to a sunless sea. (…)
In every infant's cry of fear, It was a miracle of rare device,
In every voice, in every ban, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
In the wind there is a voice
To see a World in a Grain of Sand Shall forbid thee to rejoice;
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, And to thee shall night deny
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand All the quiet of her sky;
And Eternity in an hour. And the day shall have a sun,
Which shall male thee wish it done.
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks
By thy delight in others’ pain,
of Religion.
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
What is now proved was once only imagin’d. I call upon thee! And compel
One thought fills immensity. Thyself to be thy proper Hell! (…)
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of Nor to slumber, nor to die,
instruction. Shall be in thy destiny;
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted
desires. So we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
I wandered lonely as a cloud Though the heart be still as loving,
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, And the moon be still as bright.
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils; Brave men were living before Agamemnon
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
But then they shone not on the poet's page,
Continuous as the stars that shine And so have been forgotten: I condemn none,
And twinkle on the milky way, But can't find any in the present age
They stretched in never-ending line Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
Along the margin of a bay: So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Tis time the heart should be unmoved,
     Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
             Still let me love!
   My days are in the yellow leaf;
       The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
             Are mine alone!
    The fire that on my bosom preys
       Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze—
             A funeral pile.
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; (…)
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal -- yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.
[poetic texts: approximately 250 words – 1 point each]
[narrative texts: approximately 300 words – 2 points
each]
IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man
in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man
may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is
so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that
he is considered as the rightful property of someone or
other of their daughters.
The business of her life was to get her daughters married;
its solace was visiting and news.
Mr. Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had
a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His
sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion.
(…) but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of
the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble
mien, and the report which was in general circulation
within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten
thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a
fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much
handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with
great admiration for about half the evening, till his
manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his
popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above
his company, and above being pleased; and not all his
large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from
having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and
being unworthy to be compared with his friend.
"You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the
room," said Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.
"Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But
there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you,
who is very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let
me ask my partner to introduce you." "Which do you
mean?" and turning round he looked for a moment at
Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and
coldly said: "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to
tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give
consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other
men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her
smiles, for you are wasting your time with me." Mr.
Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off; and
Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings towards
him. She told the story, however, with great spirit among
her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which
delighted in anything ridiculous.
‘Engaged to Mr. Collins! my dear Charlotte - impossible!’
(…) ‘I see what you are feeling,’ replied Charlotte, - ‘you
must be surprised, very much surprised - so lately as Mr
Collins was wishing to marry you. But when you have had
time to think it all over, I hope you will be satisfied with
what I have done. I am not romantic, you know. I never
was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr
Collins's character, connections, and situation in life, I am
convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair
as most people can boast on entering the marriage state."