Literature, Romanticism, and Revolution

Catalog description

The Romantic era (1785-1830) was one of many revolutions, both political and literary. In this course, we will draw connections between these different revolutions by reading key English prose pieces debating the merits of democracy and rights alongside those proclaiming new aesthetic paradigms for poetry and art. We will consider literary contributions to such important topics as the controversies surrounding the abolition of slavery and women’s rights and education. In addition to a selection from the “Big Six” Romantic poets—William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, William Blake, and Lord Byron—we will read popular novelists like Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, as well as the slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Mary Prince.