Romantic Narrative Poetry: A Seminar - LIR 616

The course studies the Romantics’ long narrative poetic works. It explores Romantic narrative poetry as a reflection of the Romantics’ concern in the hero as a person of magnitude facing the mystifying and incomprehensible or as a common person living the tragic events of everyday life. The course pays particular attention to long narrative poetry as a replacement for the epic. Texts include: Wordsworth’s “The Prelude,” “The Ruined Cottage,” and “Michael,” Coleridge’s “Christabel” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Byron’s “Don Juan” and “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” Shelley’s “Alastor” and “Epipsychidion,” and Keats’s “Endymion,” “Isabella,” and “Hyperion.”