ENGL 3047 - Rhapsody & Revolution: Romanticism & Its Legacies

Romanticism has profoundly shaped modern sensibilities, informing our conceptions of individual subjectivity, our notions of the creative artist and the role of art, our understanding of the relation of the individual to the natural world, and our ideas of the fantastic and the uncanny. Arising as an ambivalent reaction to various intellectual strands of the Enlightenment, and a rebellion against classicism in the arts, the Romantic movement swept Europe in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789 and had momentous effects on all art forms: literature, music, dance, and the visual arts. In this course we will explore some major Romantic texts in relation to a set of key themes: revolution, liberty and gender; the role of art and the conception of the creative artist; the exaltation of the emotions, the senses and the imagination; the relation of the individual to nature; the uncanny and the fantastic; Bohemianism and alternative communities. Texts examined may include poetry, political writing and essays, novels, biographies, visual artworks, instrumental music, opera and ballet. Students completing this course will develop an enhanced understanding of key Romantic texts and ideas, as well as an appreciation of how Romantic ideologies and motifs underpin subsequent cultural movements such as the Gothic, Decadence, Surrealism and Modernism.