Romantic Lives

“Romantic Lives” is a course with elements of seminar and lecture in which we will immerse ourselves in the glorious efflorescence of British Romantic writing by considering some examples of self-oriented work from both a literary and a biographical perspective.

Readings will include not only some iconic Romantic poetry but also some less well celebrated prose: fiction, essays, letters and journals. We will address the lives and work of Lord Byron, Hartley Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, Charles Lamb, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and William Wordsworth.

Peter Campbell has written, “Old art becomes impenetrable (which is not to say, unenjoyable) when we no longer have the will or the knowledge to recreate the mindset of its makers and audience”. The same goes for literature. We will attempt to understand the Romantic mindset – and the mindsets of individual Romantics – not only through reading and writing but also through a three-day trip to the Lake District, where several of our writers made their homes and interacted with each other.

No other literary movement has been interconnected by such a complex web of relationships: lovers, spouses, siblings, parents and children, friends. The course’s final assignment will be a paper about one of these relationships.