Most of the set texts are in the required textbooks: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume D, The Romantic Period, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (W. W. Norton & Co, 2024); and The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume E, The Victorian Age, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (W. W. Norton & Co, 2024).

Texts not in the Nortons are available in the downloadable module pack  or through the online links below.

A handout of selections from John Clare's Autobiographical Fragments is available here  

 

Term 1

 

1. Introduction - planning your year's work

2. Anna Barbauld, 'The Mouse’s Petition', 'Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq', 'To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible'

Phillis Wheatley, 'A Hymn to the Evening', 'His Excellency General Washington'

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (extracts in the Norton)

3. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (in the Norton) and have a look at these various images from The Marriage

4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Frost at Midnight', 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', 'Dejection: An Ode'

5. William Wordsworth, 'Lines Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey', 'We are Seven', 'Simon Lee', 'I Wandered lonely as a cloud', 'Strange fits of passion I have known', 'She dwelt among the untrodden ways', 'Three years she grew', 'A slumber did my spirit seal', The Prelude: Book Sixth: Crossing Simplon Pass, Book Eleventh: Spots of Time

6. Reading week: no seminars/lectures

7. Dorothy Wordsworth, from The Alfoxden Journal and The Grasmere Journals (extracts in the Norton); 'Grasmere-A Fragment'

8. Charlotte Smith, 'Beachy Head'

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Mont Blanc'

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (extracts in pack)

9. John Clare, 'To a Fallen Elm' (in pack), 'The Nightingale' text 'The Badger' (consult the version in the Norton and the one in the pack); 'The Mouse's Nest', 'I Am', 'An Invite to Eternity', 'Emmonsails Heath in Winter' text

10. John Keats, 'Ode to a Nightingale', 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', 'To Autumn', 'The Eve of St Agnes', letters to Benjamin Bailey, Nov 22, 1817; to George and Thomas Keats, Dec 21, 1817 (letters in the Norton)

 

Term 2 

1. Felicia Hemans, 'Properzia Rossi', 'Corinne at the Capitol', 'Casabianca'

Letitia Landon: 'Love’s Last Lesson', 'Sappho's Song', 'Calypso Watching the Ocean', 'Lines of Life', 'Revenge'

Germaine de Staël, Corinne, or Italy (extract in pack)

2. Alfred Tennyson, 'Mariana', 'Ulysses', 'Maud' (extract in pack)Link opens in a new window

3. Emily Brontë, 'The Prisoner: A Fragment', 'Stars', 'Faith and Despondency' (extract in pack)

Matthew Arnold, 'Dover Beach'

4. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 'A Musical Instrument' (extract in pack), 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point', 'The Cry of the Children', Aurora Leigh (extract from Book V in the Norton)

5. Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam (extracts in the Norton - your tutor may direct you to pay special attention to particular lyrics)

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (extracts in the Norton)

6. Reading week: no seminars/lectures

7. Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, 'A Birthday', 'Cobwebs', 'In An Artist’s Studio', 'After Death', 'Who has seen the wind?' (extract in pack), 'Consider' (extract in pack), 'Uphill'

Isaac Williams, On Reserve; John Keble, Lectures on Poetry (extracts in pack)

8. Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'God’s Grandeur', 'The Windhover', 'As kingfishers catch fire', 'Pied Beauty', 'Binsey Poplars'; from Journal (extracts in the Norton)

9. Amy Levy, 'Magdalen', 'In the Mile End Road', 'Contradictions', 'The Sequel to "A Reminiscence"', 'A Ballad of Religion and Marriage', 'Xantippe' (extract in pack)

Michael Field, 'Unbosoming', 'To Christina Rossetti', 'The Sleeping Venus' (extract in pack)

10. Oscar Wilde, 'Impression du Matin', 'The Harlot’s House', Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, from De Profundis (extracts in the Norton)

Ernest Dowson, 'Cynara', 'They Are Not Long'