ENGL 4416: The Romantic Movement

Here is the course description from the current syllabus:

Most have asked questions like: "Why am I here?"; "What is the meaning of life?"; "Why does the universe exist?" People employ a variety of methods to frame a response - some turn to religion, some to science, some even to politics or Harry Potter. In the years before Wordsworth wrote "Tintern Abbey," the traditional basis of personal identity, religion, was quickly eroding - society was becoming increasingly secular, making it more difficult to use religion in defining the self. Nor did science or politics offer much support: the encroachments of the Industrial Revolution and the failure of freedom's cause in the aftermath of the French Revolution cast a significant segment of the population further adrift. "Romanticism" bloomed to fulfill a need, to at least record the search if not the answers to such fundamental questions as "Who am I and what is this world I find myself in?"

Consequently, in this class we will be both perpetuating and expanding on Abram's classic formulation of Romanticism as "spilt religion." Not limited to issues of faith, our scope of inquiry will be how Romantic literature explores the complex ways in which religion, science, politics, gender, and race frame us and provide us answers to fundamental questions. By the course's conclusion, I hope we will be in a position to evaluate not only the value of this Romantic response to social confusion, but also the efficacy of a Romantic response to the causes of uncertainty in our own time.