English 231 - British Romanticism

This class will examine the ways Romantic-era writers figured revolution and the reaction against it, in the wake of the French Revolution's spectacular but failed promises of liberty, fraternity, and equality for all. We will pay special attention to how British writers envisioned their own versions of freedom and equality, extending them to women, slaves, and the poor. Likewise we will explore how this project for social change was necessarily related to revolutions in language and aesthetics. Authors may include Burke, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Smith, Barbauld, Blake, Austen, Keats, Percy and Mary Shelley, Byron, and Hemans.

Course limited to sophomores, juniors and seniors