Week Topic and Readings

1. Introduction: Forms and Histories
Mary Robinson, “January, 1795” [handout]
William Wordsworth, “London 1802” [R, 276]
Anna Letitia Barbauld, “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven” [RWP, 10]
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “England in 1819” [R, 876]

2. Sonnets
Charlotte Smith, Elegiac Sonnets (3rd edition: 1786) [RWP, 72ff]
Mary Robinson, Sappho and Phaon (1796) [RWP, 184ff]
William Wordsworth, “Sonnets” in Poems in Two Volumes (1807) [handout]
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To Wordsworth” [R, 852], “Ozymandias” [R, 860],
“Political Greatness” [handout], “England in 1819” [R, 876]
John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” [R, 1009], “When I
have fears that I may cease to be” [R, 1016], “If by dull rhymes our
English must be chained” [handout], etc.

3. Songs, Ballads, Tales, Records
Anna Letitia Barbauld, “Songs I-VI,” “The Origin of Song-Writing” (1772)
[handout]
Robert Burns, “Song” (1791) [R, 133]
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789-1794)
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798)
[R, 166]
Mary Robinson, Lyrical Tales (1800) [handout]
John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (1819) [R, 1051]
Felicia Hemans, Records of Woman (1828) [RWP, 514]

4. Meditations
Anna Letitia Barbauld, “A Summer Evening’s Meditation” (1773) [R, 17]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Eolian Harp” [R, 505], “This Lime
Tree Bower My Prison”[R, 511], “Frost at Midnight” [R, 516]
William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey” (1789) [R, 240]
Dorothy Wordsworth, “Thoughts on my Sickbed” [R, 502]
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mont Blanc” [R, 856]

 
5. Odes
Ann Batten Cristall, “An Ode” (1795) [RWP, 343]
Anna Letitia Barbauld, “Ode to Spring,” “To a Great Nation” [handouts]
William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”(1806) [R, 276]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Dejection; an Ode” (1802) [R, 560/544]
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” (1820) [R, 870]
John Keats, Psyche, Nightingale, Grecian Urn, Melancholy, Autumn (1820)
[R, 1054ff.]

6. Romances
Mary Tighe, Psyche (1805) [RWP, 376]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” (1798) [R, 514], “Christabel”(1798-
1801) [R, 528]
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor (1816) [R, 834]

7. Verse Drama
Joanna Baillie, De Monfort (1798) [handout]
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Manfred (1817) [R, 734]
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cenci (1820) [handout]

8. Naturalist Epic
Charlotte Smith, The Emigrants (1793) [RWP, 88],
Beachy Head (1806) [RWP, 110]

9. William Wordsworth, Prelude (1805) [R, 284]

10. (Re)visionary Epic
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1817) [R, 578/167]
John Keats, “Hyperion: A Fragment” (1820) [R, 1019], “The Fall of
Hyperion: a Dream” (1820) [R, 1064]

11. William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790),
Milton (1803-8) [handout]

12. Epic Drama
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820) [R, 876]

13. Epic Mockery
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819ff.) [R, 769]

14. Conclusions
Seminar Dinner/Mock Exams