106-004 Romanticism and Revolution

Usually 25 points of first year English, see Prerequisites.

This subject introduces students to a wide range of British Romantic writing, focusing on key texts of British Romanticism, and placing them within the cultural debates that emerged after the French Revolution of 1789. It considers genres such as the political pamphlet (Edmund Burke and Tom Paine), lyric poetry (William Wordsworth and Lord Byron), the novel and the diary, in the context of debates on revolution, empire, cultural commodification, class, gender and sexuality. It also examines the development of Romantic literary celebrity in relation to the formation of public culture. Students should develop an understanding of the historical, political and social contexts that inform Romantic writing, as well as a familiarity with a range of contemporary theoretical, critical and literary-historical approaches to the study of Romantic writing.