ENGL 330: British Romanticism in Global Context
Dr. Matt Poland (mjpoland@uw.edu)
This course surveys primarily British literature from approximately 1787 to the 1830s, that is, from the French and Haitian Revolutions to the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign. The course will zoom out to frame Romanticism in a worldwide context by considering its relationships to imperialism and chattel slavery, as well as writers who were not counted in the “canon” of the period until recently. We will consider aesthetic issues of form and genre, topics of enduring importance such as gender and race, and the ambiguities of the reception of British Romanticism in the contemporary “postcolonial” world by readers of color and Indigenous readers. Evaluation by participation and discussion, close reading essays, and in-class exams.
Texts will include prose fiction -- Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, The Woman of Colour, and Mary Shelley's The Last Man -- and poetry by Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel T. Coleridge, Felicia Hemans, John Keats, Letitia E. Landon, Egbert Martin, Hannah More, John Newton, Edward Rushton, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, and others.