World Lit week 7: getting Romantic

/in /by

This week you’ll be sampling a variety of writers working in verse, spanning the 19th century. Among them are great representatives of the Romantic tradition, as well as pre-Modern writers who were beginning to react to that tradition in very interesting ways, sometimes rejecting some or all of its key tenets. You’ll also dip into a few writers working completely outside that tradition — such as the Indian poet, Ghalib.

In order to tackle this week’s discussion, you’ll need to have finished viewing the Week 7 Viewing, and compiled your list of Romantic traits from the BBC documentary as well as the intro in your text.

Here’s what to do:

  1. List the characteristic of Romanticism you’ve identified from the text and the BBC documentary we watched.
  2. Choose three of the poets we’ve read and explain how those traits apply (or don’t apply) to his/her work. You might find some poems have elements of Romanticism, but break away from the movement in other ways.
  3. Be sure to provide specific quotations from the poems you’ve selected to support your analysis.

As always, your initial post, and your responses, need to be substantive.

Reading List:

Textbook: The Nortons Anthology of World Literature

“Lyric Poetry in the Nineteenth Century” (574-577)

“William Blake” (577-581)

From Songs of Innocence (beg. 582)

“Introduction”, “The Lamb”, “The Chimney Sweeper”

From Songs of Experience (beg. 585)

“Introduction”, “Earth’s Answer”, “The Tyger”, “London”, “The Chimney Sweeper”

“William Wordsworth” (588-592)

“The World Is Too Much with Us” (596)

“Heinrich Heine” (615-616)

“The Silesian Weavers” (617)

“Ghalib” (618-622)

“I’ve made my home next door to you” (624-625)

“Walt Whitman” (646-647)

From Song of Myself (648-653)

Charles Baudelaire (654-656)

“A Carcass” (659-660)

Emily Dickinson (666-668)

(Read any two poems by Dickinson)

https://bigthink.com/videos/how-to-read-a-poem