ENG 434 - The Romantics

Semester Hours: 4

As an artistic movement, romanticism is characterized by its emphasis on passion, feeling, intuition, imagination, nature, and the individual. Political rebellions of the late 18th century inspired writers, painters, and musicians. Their work demonstrates a similar optimistic belief in the individual and a quest to improve self and society. Indeed, artists emerged as leaders in this effort, with Percy Shelley calling them “the unacknowledged legislators of the World.” This course explores the Romantic Movement in British literature (with attention also given to painting and music) and the authors-including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats-who inspired their American counterparts to transplant romanticism to the new land in the early to mid-1800s. Readings, discussion, and other assignments will increase our appreciation of artists who cultivate “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” “march to the beat of a different drummer,” “sound [their] barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world,” “feed on honey-dew,” and “drink the milk of Paradise.”