Romantic & Sentimental Literature 1770-1830 – (M.A.)

This course is centrally but not exclusively concerned with Romanticism. The Romantic movement has traditionally been seen to dominate the aesthetic and literary output of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but recent critical and historical scholarship has emphasized the range and diversity of contemporary literary forms and styles of writing which cannot comfortably be treated as though they were part of that movement.

By setting Romantic and Sentimental writings alongside each other the MA offers students an opportunity to find their own paths through the literary and cultural history of the period. Works by writers such as Henry Mackenzie, Helen Maria Williams, Robert Bage, Mary Hays, Mrs Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, George Crabbe, Hannah More or Jane Austen, for instance, can be persuasively treated as Sentimental or Anti-Sentimental rather than Romantic.

At the same time, by examining the literary and aesthetic works at the centre of the course in the light of the historical circumstances in which they were produced, the MA offers participants the chance to develop a broad view of the major changes in sensibility and ideology of the period, and to investigate such contemporary issues as the representation of landscape or revolution, the place of women as writers, the role of the periodicals as a cultural medium and the importance of ideas of Empire and the Orient, as well as studying Romantic aesthetic theory and poetic practice.

While concentrating on British writers, the course may also include selected German and French texts, which will normally be read in translation.