ENG20490

Learning Outcomes:

1. Have an understanding of the many types of literature produced in the Romantic period.
2. Have a knowledge of key and lesser-known poets, dramatists, non-fiction writers, and novelists, from Olaudah Equiano and William Wordsworth to Jane Austen and Mary Shelley.
3. Appreciate the political and historical circumstances of the period, and how writers responded to these social and political changes, including environmental concerns, slavery and abolition, protest and radicalism, and war.
4. Use secondary sources and literary analysis to write critically about the literature of the period.

Indicative Module Content:

Cultural contexts, such the French Revolution and human rights; environmental concerns; slavery and abolition; radicalism and protest; war; and dystopia and resource depletion.
Literary analysis of poetry, drama, novels, and non-fiction, such as autobiography
Critical reading of primary and secondary sources.

The United Nations identified seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as core to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and UCD contributes in general to SDG 4 Quality Education. Further SDGs explored within this module if relevant are listed below. A scale of 1 - 5 indicates the extent to which the SDG is covered.


 

Student Effort Hours:

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:

Lectures
Weekly tutorials and focused in-class discussion
Brightspace material

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.

Module Requisites and Incompatibles

Incompatibles:
ENG20020 - Eighteenth-Century Literature, ENG20590 - Romanticism (EVENING)


 

Assessment Strategy

 

Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Feedback for essays will be posted on Brightspace. Students are also welcome to request a feedback meeting with their tutor to discuss their feedback further.

List of Primary Texts

Unless otherwise indicated, poems and prose extracts available in:
Romanticism: An Anthology (ed. Duncan Wu), available online as an e-book from UCD Library

Novels:
Jane Austen, Emma (Oxford World’s Classics)
Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent (Oxford World’s Classics)
Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance (Oxford World’s Classics)
Mary Shelley, The Last Man (Oxford World’s Classics)


Week 1: Introduction
Prose:
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution
William Wordsworth, “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads
Poems:
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”
William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”

Week 2: Romantic Nature
Poems:
John Keats, “To Autumn”
William Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”
William Wordsworth, “There was a Boy”

Week 3: The Sublime
Prose:
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful
Poems:
Charlotte Smith, “Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mont Blanc”

Week 4: Slavery and Abolition
Prose:
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano [extracts available on Brightspace]
Poems:
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, “Epistle to William Wilberforce”
William Cowper, “The N-----’s Complaint”

Week 5: Ireland the Union
Novel:
Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent

Week 6: War and Peace
Novel:
Jane Austen, Emma

Week 7: War, Radicalism, and Protest
Poems:
William Wordsworth, “The Old Cumberland Beggar”
William Wordsworth, “The Discharged Soldier”
William Wordsworth, “The Last of the Flock”
William Blake, “London”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, “England in 1819”
Robert Southey, “The Victory” [available on Brightspace]

Week 8: Reading Week

Week 9: The Gothic Novel
Novel:
Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance

Week 10: Romantic Dystopia 1
Poems:
Lord Byron, “Darkness”
Mary Anne Browne, “A World Without Water” [available on Brightspace]

Week 11: Romantic Dystopia 2
Novel:
Mary Shelley, The Last Man

Week 12: Revision and Exam Preparation
Revision - no reading or preparation necessary