Welcome to the Course

“Literature is the sum of its discoveries.  What is derivative can be impressive and intelligent.  It can give pleasure and it will have its season, short or long.  But we will always want to go back to the originators…what is good is always what is new, in both form and content.  What is good forgets whatever models it might have had, and is unexpected; we have to catch it on the wing” (V.S. Naipaul)

Welcome to the blog for British Literature to 1800: As the second part of the British Literature survey at ECU, this class picks up at a crucial point in literary/world history—the rise of the artistic/philosophical movement known as Romanticism. The entire 19th century lived in Romanticism’s shadow, even as the Victorians were trying to distance themselves from its more alarming excesses. This class will focus solely on the rise and repercussions of Romanticism throughout the 19th century, beginning with the “Lake Poets” and ending with first flickerings of Modernism. It’s rare that a single class can offer so many iconic literary works (though we can only touch on a few), but British Literature from 1800 is just such a class. From Frankenstein’s monster to the first alien invasion from Mars, this class is full of “firsts,” and I hope you can read these works in the light of what was to come, yet without seeing them as mere precursors to the “future.” In many ways, the 19th century is the most modern century of all, as every book we read today owes something to the literary pioneers of this era.

Be sure to buy the books for this class as soon as possible--we start reading next week!

Required Texts

Ø  English Romantic Poetry (Dover)

Ø  Austen, Persuasion (Norton ed. required)

Ø  Shelley, Frankenstein (Norton ed. required)

Ø  Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Oxford)

Ø  Kipling, The Jungle Books (Penguin)

Ø  Wells, The War of the Worlds (Penguin)