Genre

Romanticism

In this twelve-part course, Dr Ross Wilson (University of Cambridge) explores Romanticism, the literary movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century. In the first module, we think about the question of genre in Romantic poetry. In the second, we think about poetic language. In the third, we explore the theme of emotions, sensations and feelings in Romantic poetry before turning in the fourth to the concepts of ‘poetry’ and ‘the poet’. In the fifth module we think about the important concept of the sublime in Romantic poetry before moving on in the sixth to consider the presentation of nature more generally. In the seventh module, we think about the presentation of the supernatural in the poetry of the Romantic period, while in the eighth we consider the political context in which the poetry of the Romantic period was being written. In the ninth module, we think about the idea of the Romantic canon, before turning in the tenth to the manifestation of Romanticism in other media, including architecture, painting, music and theatre. Finally, in the eleventh and twelfth modules, we turn to some more recent criticism of Romanticism, looking first at the twentieth century, and then at the twenty-first.

Genre

In this module, we think about the relationship between Romanticism and the concept of genre, focusing in particular on: (i) the view of writers such as Bryan Procter and William Wordsworth that genre was little more than ‘the capricious habits of former poets’ that stifled poetic creativity and expression; and (ii) the revival in this period of several poetic forms that had been neglected in the course of the 18th century (or longer), such as the ballad, the sonnet, and even the autobiography.