ENGL 6390

Studies in Romanticism: Pleasure and Knowledge in Wordsworth and Keats

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

This seminar seeks to be both a thorough and a focused introduction to the writing of two crucial English poets. Making a claim for the importance of poetry, Wordsworth asserted, "We have no knowledge but what has been built up by pleasure." Reading closely texts of Wordsworth, Keats, and their critics, we will ask what kinds of knowledge issue from the pleasure their poetry imparts. In addition, we will reconsider Wordsworth's and Keats's poetry in relation to the Enlightenment idea that pleasure is an essential constituent of sociability. Their poetry reflects this idea in radically different ways, in a contrast of styles-and of relations to gender and class-that we will try to distinguish and interpret. Two ten-or-more page papers required.

When Offered Fall.

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