• Notes on Rights of Man Debate
• Notes on Rights of Woman
• Notes on Abolition Reading
• Notes on Emsley's "War" and Hobsbawn
• Notes on War 1793-1800
• Notes on Caleb Williams
• Notes on Barbauld
• Notes on Wordsworth's Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty
• Notes on Marmion
• Notes on Persuasion

Modified Reading Schedule

First Six Pages of P. M. S. Dawson's "Poetry in an age of revolution" (pdf)

Color plates of Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion (pdf)

Student Presentation Schedules

Description

Up until 1914, whenever a Briton spoke of the “Great War” he or she meant the nearly uninterrupted twenty-two years of conflict between Britain and France. While the impact of the French Revolution on British literature and culture has been studied at length, the impact of this first modern war—modern in terms of weapons, tactics, scope and devastation—has only recently attracted the attention of scholars of literature and culture.

This relative lack of interest in wartime Britain is surprising when one considers the prominence of the war—its images, its seductions, its savagery—in virtually every aspect of British life during the two decade period generally considered the core of British Romanticism. It is the war that produces the beggars, drifters, discharged soldiers, widows and orphans that crowd Wordsworth’s poems. It is the war that encourages Walter Scott to collect the ballads and songs of the “borders” to celebrate the valor of warrior Scots. It is the war that provides Byron with the gruesome background against which he constructs his larger-than-life self. It is the war that propels Shelley, Blake, Barbauld and others into dangerous opposition to the idea of war.

In this course we will read a wide-range of texts published between 1793 and 1815 by significant writers of the time, such as Burke, Paine, Godwin, Barbauld, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Scott, Austen, Byron and Shelley. We will also look at less traditional works such as popular ballads, periodical literature, and journalistic accounts, as well as recent historical scholarship on Britain and the war.

Because this is a seminar class rather than a formal lecture course, active and informed contribution to class discussion is expected from all students.

Reading List

The following texts are required for this class:

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. (978-0192802637)

Bennett, Betty T. Ed. British War Poetry in the Age of Romanticism, 1793-1815. Romantic Circles (online). University of Maryland, 2005. < http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/warpoetry/>

Godwin, William. Caleb Williams. London: Broadview, 2000. (978-1551112497)

Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848. New York: Vintage, 1996. (978-0679772538)

Scott, Walter. Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field. University Press of the Pacific, 2001. (978-0898753820)

Wolfson, Manning, eds. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 2A. Third Edition. New York: Longman. (978-0321333940)

Wordsworth, William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads. Ed. R. L. Brett and A. R. Jones. London: Routledge Classics, 2005. (978-0415355292)

The following text is recommended for this class

Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging a Nation, 1707-1837. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1992. (978-0300107593)