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British Literature 3: Isn't It Romantic? Cary Honig email: caryh@school-one.org
Nil sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus
Welcome to the Brit. Lit. 3 wiki. Hopefully, having an overview of what we will do and roughly when will make the class easier. This also allows me to make the suggested but not required readings available in a context that might make them more attractive. The workload is actually a little lighter this trimester than previous times I taught this class as two of the essays will be done in class, which most students consider easier.
Students can take this class for English or history credit. Because the class is so writing intense, there is a different workload for English and history students with history students writing fewer essays (and usually those that have more history or sociological content). The reading requirements are the same. The syllabi provide the details.
Every student even considering this class must read and sign the source policy and abide by it. Failure to do so will lead to no credit in the class. I am not interested in what anyone at wikipedia, Sparknotes or Harvard thinks about this literature. I am interested in what you think. You must think for yourself in this class. If you don't want to do that and perhaps occasionally struggle, don't take the class. You are always welcome to come discuss your ideas with me before writing if you are worried you are off track. I won't tell you what to write or think, but I am happy to ask you questions that might help you to focus or reorient. This is NOT a research class; it is a thinking class. Please respect that and trust that I respect ideas that may be flawed but original far more than ideas that are on more solid ground but aren't yours.
For a guide to proper citation within text and bibliography (works cited), go to
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/
Weekly sections below are split into two parts. The first paragraph is about classwork projected for that week, although we won't always be on target. Links under the weekly schedule are to note sheets we will use in class or that might be useful to you as well as to articles that are usually recommended but not required to add to your knowledge about what we are discussing in class.
Essays are due almost every week on Thursdays at class time. Revisions should be done soon after being returned but must be completed by the Monday after they are returned unless an earlier date is specified at the end of the trimester. On two occasions this trimester, students will do their essays in class on Thursdays to practice for college testing. They should be sure to have read the materials very carefully and to have given them some thought before taking these exams, but the questions are broad and don't require focus on one particular detail in the text(s). Students who are absent on these days will do the essays at home with the amount of evidence expected in an essay done at home, so that means considerably more work. If you're out on those days, I won't give you the in-class essay at a different time. In-class essays are generally not revised unless the student didn't do the reading. At-home essays need revision until I approve a draft as final because you have addressed the issues I identified in your draft(s).
Late work is not tolerated in this class. If a student is late on one essay, s/he will have to do an additional essay as well as the one that is late. If a second assignment is late, the student cannot earn credit. If a student is home sick, the essay must be emailed on time. Exceptions will only be made in a situation that is completely unavoidable by the student and for which there is clear evidence and that was pre-arranged.
Students should begin reading the materials as soon as they sign up for the class (if not sooner). Even though the first essay isn't due until March 19, there are reading questions from J.M. Roberts's Ideas Old and New due for the first class on March 16. Students also must have read the selections from Swift and Hobbes to do that essay. It would be a good idea to look at the essay assignments related to the texts before reading so that you can look for evidence and ideas as your read and get help if you need it.
The abbreviation ws in links means worksheet. Even if you're not taking notes, these are designed to provide helpful guidance while reading texts.
If you want to read more about or from either or both of these periods when we're done, here's a list of suggestions:
Select Bibliography for these two periods 22
Week 1: We will begin by listening to some Classical (Mozart) and Romantic (Beethoven) music and looking at some Neo-Classical and Romantic art to see if we can tell the differences between these two periods and what's similar about the music and visual art from the same period as an introduction to the two periods we will study this trimester. We will then review key aspects of the Medieval and Early Modern (Renaissance) mindsets as a starting comparison with our two new periods. We will discuss Deism, which is an important Enlightenment approach to religion and very important for many of our Founding Fathers. We will then begin reading the poetry of this period beginning with Dryden, Wilmot, Swift and Pope.
Grammar: Commas and Initial Words and Phrases and Comma Review
Boswell and 18th Century London Culture
Dryden Ode on St. Cecilia's Day
A Satire against reason and mankind
Wilmot Satire Against Mankind ws
Mandeville The Grumbling Hive text
How Rousseau predicted Trump 21
For a great discussion at the New York Public Library on March 10, 2022 featuring Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Andrew Curran previewing their new book Who's Black and Why? about racism during the Enlightenment and by leading thinkers of the Enlightenment like Jefferson and Kant as just two examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLWJZoY6UeQ
You have reading due for the first class on Monday, March 14. This is important background for this week's discussion and essay, and it's the chapter Old Ideas and New by J. M. Roberts. For the essay about Enlightenment thinking, you need to do some serious thinking after reading the two short readings from the period: A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift and selections from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. The essay is due by class time on Thursday, March 19. History folks work hard early, as they must do the Roberts questions and the first two essays as they have significant historical/sociological content. You will also have Frankenstein by this point and should be reading it, looking ahead to check out its essay topic.
Hobbes's Leviathan and the Plague 20
It would be smart to begin reading next week's packet as soon as possible as there are many separate documents within it. I strongly suggest looking at the essay topic before you begin reading. It would be foolish to leave them to read all at once.
Week 2: We will begin looking at Neo-Classical (often called Augustan) literature if we haven't already. We will read poetry by John Dryden and Edward Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, the latter of whom will make John Donne and Shakespeare, and maybe even Ms. Behn, seem very tame in comparison. Then we'll read my least favorite poem ever: Pope's An Essay on Man. If you like endless rhyming couplets and lame excuses for our travails, you'll love it. Nonetheless, it's an important poem for understanding this time period and its tensions. Learning about these texts will help you as you assess other texts from the period with regard to their views about gender for this week's essay.
Grammar: Quotations and punctuation.
Pope: The Rape of the Lock text
Mostly dirty or cynical poems by Wilmont (Rochester) and Swift
Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley
New Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft 21
Miranda Seymour on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley 21
The Pop Culture Evolution of Frankenstein17
Jill Lepore on the origins of Frankenstein 18
Frankenstein Manuscript Comes to Life 18
Mary Shelley and Human Nature 24
William Herschel pre-Romantic astronomer and musician
This week's essay is based on texts in the packet I will give you. It contains poetry and prose from many early 18th century writers including Defoe, Finch, Wortley Montagu, Astell and Pope, and your job is to assess the period's attitudes toward gender and think about how this may have changed since what we read about this topic during the last two trimesters. As you consider this, remember that Aphra Behn and Katherine Phillips, who we read last trimester, are early writers in this period and that Jane Austen is more than half a century later than most of these writers and on the cusp of the Romantic period. It's for everyone, but history students get a rest next week.
Packet of texts relating to gender for this week's essay
Article about a powerful 17th C French Duchess
Go to these links on JSTOR for two articles about Anne Conway's significant contributions to 17th century philosophy:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3809934?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=Anne&searchText=Conway&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Fgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3BQuery%3DAnne%2BConway%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff&refreqid=search%3Ab69ef7f9f93e2270246824fd94cac55d&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
16th -18th Century women writers article
Week 3: I am racing through Augustan literature because, with a few exceptions (Fielding's wonderful Tom Jones being sadly too long for us to read this trimester), I don't enjoy it. However, one can't fully appreciate the Romantic movement without understanding what it's reacting against, and while I don't think art is the Enlightenment's strong point, I'm very thankful for it in other areas like religion and politics. We will discuss A Modest Proposal and Leviathan and which is more true to the Enlightenment, and we will begin to tie this period together including the significant changes in the English political system during the 18th century. We will read some pre-Romantic poetry, which is basically Romantic poetry written before the period is acknowledged to have begun. Hopefully, we will begin Blake this week.
Pre-Romantic texts:
Anne Finch A Nocturnal Reverie text
Nocturnal Rev reference to Shakespeare
Pre-Rom Poetry packet (Thomson, Collins, Gray, Burns)
Another sad tale of a pre-Romantic poet: John Bampfylde
You have a revision of exercise one due by Monday. This week's essay is in class and only for English students. You will get a pre-Romantic poem that you haven't seen to analyze in class to follow up on the successful sonnet in class essay last trimester. These are great practice for college exams. Keep reading Frankenstein, or his monster will come get you!
1815 Eruption, Frankenstein and Turner
The Creation of Frankenstein article
Week 4: Assuming we have completed the pre-Romantics, we will enter the unique universe of William Blake, engraver and poet. Blake created this own somewhat gnostic philosophy, which he shared with the world through engravings that combined poetry and visual art. Likely inspired by Gray's poem The Bard, for which he did illustrations, Blake assumed an increasingly bardic voice in his poetry, and he was obsessed with John Milton as well. We will focus mainly on his Songs of Innocence and Experience, and I will bring in books and prints of his artwork so we can appreciate him as a visual artist. Given our addition of As Your Like It, we won't be reading all of these, but you can use them in the essay. We will hopefully begin Wordsworth this week. Grammar: Colons and Semi-Colons
Blake All Religions are One ws
Blake There Is No Natural Religion w
Blake Marriage of Heaven and Hell notes
The Shepherd, The Ecchoing Green notes
Blake Chimney Sweeper Innocence notes
Blake Chimney Sweeper Experience notes
Blake The Human Abstract notes
Blake The Garden of Love notes
Blake Holy Thursday exp. notes
Blake - Experience - Voice of the Bard
Blake Auguries of Innocence ws
This week's assignment involves both Frankenstein and the poetry of William Blake and asks you to think about the themes of innocence and experience. You should finish Frankenstein before doing this essay, and that should be clear from the essay. It is due on April 7, and the revision is due by next Friday, April 15 at noon.
Innocence and Experience essay 22
Week 5: This is Wordsworth week, and you have to limit me to just one week. Wordsworth and Coleridge were the theorists of the Romantic movement and worked together to broaden it. Grammar: Commas with however and though
1790s Romanticism's tenets across the arts '73
1790s 1790s radicalism notes
1790s Frankestein discussion notes
Words: Lines Written in Early Spring ws
Words: World is Too Much With Us ws
Words: She Was a Phantom of Delight ws
Words: Wandered Lonely As a Cloud ws
Words: Ode Intimations of Immortality ws
Frank Kermode on a Wordsworth family tragedy
DeQuincey, the Romantic Opium Eater and frenemy of Wordsworth
De Quincey, Opium, Wordsworth and Murder
This week's essay is an individual poem for each of the English students to analyze. Please don't look up any information about the poem as I just want your ideas. You ware welcome to come see me if you need help with the poem. Note that the poetry essays are due by class on Wednesday, April 13 so that I can return them before vacation (and you can revise during vacation). You should also get started on Jane Eyre. You'll be happy later if you read a lot of it over vacation. I'm attaching note sheets for the poems on the poetry essay to help you as the questions should guide you through the poems, and some have vocabulary that may help. Your poetry packets will have background information about authors, so use that and don't otherwise use the internet while writing your essay.
Poetry essay with potential extra essays 22 (and they're harder)
Coleridge The Nighingale notes
Shelley Ode to the West Wind notes
Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn notes
Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci notes
Keats Ode to a Nightingale notes
Here are links to three PBS videos from a series about the Bronte sisters dealing with their gender and their novels: https://ri.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/mast17-soc-brontebarriers/breaking-barriers-to-walk-invisible-the-bronte-sisters-masterpiece/
Peter Ackroyd on the Brontes' lives
Charlotte and other Brontes 17
A Lost Bronte Library Surfaces 21
A Lost Bronte Book resurfaces 22
Note that revisions of exercise 4 (Frankenstein and Blake) must be in by this Friday during school so I can grade them during vacation.
Week 6 (after vacation):
We will spend the week on Wordsworth 's close, brilliant and sometimes exasperating friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I believe his is some of the best poetry in the English language.Grammar: Prepositions
Coleridge Frost at Midnight ws
Coleridge Dejection: An Ode ws
Charles Lamb (Coleridge pal and Romantic essayist) bio 22
For a series of discussions of Romantic history with Rosemary Hill (history as the Romantics views it, including the beginnings of historical preservation coming from seeing history as including landscapes and not just dates) from the London Review of Books, go to:
2 Balmoral: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/romantic-history-balmoral
3 Bayeaux Tapestries: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/romantic-history-the-bayeux-tapestry
What the great Romantic painter JMW Turner Saw, and what's still there 25
You must complete at least the first fourteen chapters of Jane Eyre before writing this week's essay. As you have two weeks to do this, it would be smart to get much further in the book but check ahead for future topics before you do. You will be tying Jane Eyre to poems by Wordsworth and Blake in this essay.
Childhood in Jane Eyre and Wordsworth 22
Week 7:
If we haven't already, we will read a few selections from George Gordon, Lord Byron, whose poetry was a sensation in his time but perhaps not generally to the level of his fellow Romantics from a modern point of view. However, Don Juan is very entertaining, and we will read selections from it as well as a few shorter lyrics. These poems will only take a couple of classes, so we will forge on the the patron poet of adolescents everywhere, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and see how he follows Wordsworth's path of Platonism. Grammar: Adverbs
A Troublemaker (Byron) Who Walks In Beauty
HIlarious article about a crazy aristocrat who crossed paths with Jane Austen and Byron
Byron's daughter and computers
P Shelley Ode To the West Wind ws
P Shelley Hymn to Intellectual Beauty ws
P Shelley Choruses from Hellas ws
Article about Shelley's last days and poems 22
This is the bye week for essays, meaning you should get all revisions and re-revisions completed as you don't have a new one. You should also be getting as close to finishing Jane Eyre as possible as next week's in-class essay will require that you have completed it.
Week 8:
We need to be on schedule, and we will have this week to look at John Keats's amazing body of work, which he produced before he died at 26. This is even more amazing because he didn't write any good poetry until he was about 20 (so there's still hope for you guys). Grammar: Parallel Structure
David Pinsky reviews a Keats bio 22
Keats La Bell Dame Sans Merci ws
Keats Ode to Autumn text and notes
Wordsworth and Keats dine together
Bright Star (Keats movie) review
JMW Turner: Romantic painter 20
Helen Vendler on Keats's Odes '84
Bringing Keats Back To Life (in CGI) 21
JMW Turner: From Romanticism to Modernity 22
This week's in-class essay focuses on Jane Eyre, which you need to complete before this date. I will be giving you an assessment of Jane Eyre to read and will be expecting your opinion about this assessment's validity, citing incidents from the novel (and not just the first half or two thirds).
Week 9:We will spend the last three weeks in class (if we have time) reading William Shakespeare's As You Like It because it's an awesome Romantic play even though it was written 200 years too early to be officially Romantic. Similarly, King Lear is the greatest of all Modernist plays (300 years early), and Hamlet is certainly ahead of its time in making its revenger philosophical instead of just hysterical. Grammar: Me/I
We have reached the final essay of the year. I don't know whether that is better news for you or for me. The good news is that there's no new reading for this week unless we haven't gotten to all of Keats's poems in the packet, in which case you should look at them, especially Ode on a Grecian Urn. As is always the case on final essays, you will be incorporating many texts into a complex theme: how the Romantics viewed time and its effects. You will be using the two novels and lots of Romantic poetry.
Final essay - Romantics and time 22
Week 10:
We will continue with As You Like It. Depending on timing, you may have to read some of it at home so we can finish the play and have time to discuss it. Grammar: Split Infinitives and Additional Usage
Homework is to revise the final essays (and any re-revisions) by Thursday's class if you plan to earn credit.
Week 11:
We will complete As You Like it and discuss Jane Eyre in detail and look at the artwork of J.M.W. Turner. If somehow we're a couple of days ahead, we will have a treat: watching the film of Tom Jones, the great Augustan novel that was too long for us to read this trimester but that you should definitely read on your own (after reading The Odyssey). We will look at one final poem, which is an American poem from the last 20th Century to see where poetry is heading in next year's class. Wednesday is Jeopardy day.
The Pond at Dusk by Jane Kenyon
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