History of English Literature:

The Enlightenment and the

Romantic Age

1st year English majors and minors 2nd term, 2015

Course conductor: Dr. Cornelia MACSINIUC,

Associate Professor

What this course offers:

• A brief introduction to the English literature of the 18th and

early 19th centuries – the historical-cultural-literary periods

dealt with: the Enlightenment and the Romantic Age.

• A description of the defining features of the dominant

literary trends and doctrines of these periods

• A presentation of the contributions of the most outstanding

authors: Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, Blake,

Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats).

• The focus of our study will be on the dominant and most

representative genres in each of the two movements:

a) The 18th century novel

b) Romantic poetry

What this course hopes to achieve:

Widen your perspective on the evolution of English literature.

Contribute to the consolidation of your knowledge of British culture

and civilisation.

Increase your language-sensitivity and your mastery of English

Contribute to your professional becoming.

Bear in mind:

The study of a foreign language does not presuppose only acquiring a good command of its grammatical structures and vocabulary, but also an intimate acquaintance with the spirit of that culture and civilisation.

Literature is always an important testimony to the evolution of this spirit, a carrier of values, and an “agent” in the cultural dynamics of a country.

Course objectives By the end of your study of this course, you should

be able to:

define the distinctive features, the characteristic attitudes and concerns of the

Enlightenment and the Romantic Age as cultural-historical-literary periods

identify elements of continuity and discontinuity between the literary

tendencies of these periods

define the main features of the dominant aesthetic doctrines and literary

sensibility of these periods

identify these features in the work of a particular author or in a particular text

identify, in a given text, the values of the cultural-historical or literary age to

which it belongs

Identify elements of originality and/or continuity with a tradition in a particular

work or a given text

specify the contribution of the studied authors and their works to the evolution

of literary forms and styles

describe and compare particularities of style, characterisation, thematic and

formal structure in the works of the studied authors

Course structure and contents

26.02 1. Introduction: „The long eighteenth century”. England and the Enlightenment

5.03 2. The Augustan Age. Neoclassic poetics

12.03 3. Augustan satire. Jonathan Swift

19.03 4. The rise of the novel as a literary genre

26.03 5. Daniel Defoe: the novel as spiritual autobiography

9.04

16.04

6, 7. Laurence Sterne and the anti-novel: the comedy of

metafiction

23.04 8. The pre-Romantic sensibility and the Romantic turn

30.04 9. William Blake and the double vision

7.05 10. William Wordsworth: radicalism, humanitarianism and

Romantic nature

14.05 11. Coleridge: Primary Imagination and the Romantic paradise

21.05 12. George Gordon Byron: the romantic hero and ironic self-

consciousness

28.05 13. John Keats: the poetry of Negative Capability

4.06 14. Concluding session

Compulsory reading for course work

• Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe

• Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels

• Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram

Shandy, Gentleman

• William Blake: selections from Songs of Innocence and

of Experience

• William Wordsworth: selections from Lyrical Ballads

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Kubla Khan

• John Keats: La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ode on a

Grecian Urn

Recommended bibliography

Main course book:

Macsiniuc, Cornelia, The English Eighteenth Century. The

Novel in Its Beginnings, Editura Universității Suceava,

2003

Chapter I (Historical Outline): pp. 9-14

Chapter II (From the Age of Reason to the Age of Feeling): pp. 17-

29

from Chapter III (The Augustan Age: Literary Background): pp. 33-

57

Chapter IV (The Rise of the Novel – subchapter on Daniel Defoe

included): pp. 75-105

Chapter VII (Henry Fielding): pp. 179-214

Chapter VIII (Laurence Sterne): pp. 217-247

• Bloom, Harold (ed.), The Eighteenth-Century English

Novel (Bloom’s Period Studies), Philadelphia: Chelsea

House Publishers, 2004

• Bloom, Harold (ed.), English Romantic Poetry (Bloom’s

Period Studies), Chelsea House Publishers, 2004

• Chandler, James (ed.), The Cambridge History of English

Romantic Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2009

• Chase, Cynthia (ed.), Romanticism, London & New York:

Longman, 1993

• McKeon, Michael, The Origins of the English Novel. 1600–1740, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002

Course evaluation – 50% of the

final grade

Form of evaluation: written paper – 1.5 hrs

The requirements for passing the course

exam are detailed in the Course

Objectives