The Romantic age, the period between 1760 and 1830, was not only a politically rebellious phase but also rich in literature, particularly in a poetry that departed from previous rules. Among the themes of this new poetry were the miraculous, the fantastic, the monstrous, sublime and beautiful nature as well as the rebellious and solitary individual. We will read and discuss poems by William Blake, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy B. Shelley, John Keats, the 'big six', but also by well-known women poets, for example Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson. In addition, we will look at prose texts, ranging from fiction to essay writing.

Our central prose text will be William Godwin's forceful novel Things as They Are; or the Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), which famously highlights the topics of justice and power. Shorter poetological texts as well as documents about the wider political context (the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars) will round off the picture. Besides, we will look into Romantic-period print culture.

Course requirements: regular and active attendance, oral presentation, term paper (Hausarbeit).

Reading:

• William Godwin, Caleb Williams, ed. Maurice Hindle (London: Penguin Classics, 2003).

Further information about the poems will be made available.

Recommended background reading:

• Frederick Burwick, A History of Romantic Literature (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2019).
• Romanticism: An Anthology, ed. Duncan Wu, 3rd or 4th ed. (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2006 / 2012). This book contains most of the shorter text we will be reading as well as very useful introductions to authors and contexts. You may want to look at it.