Thursday, August 17th
Course Introduction / What is the Romantic Era?
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Tuesday, August 22nd / The Revolution Controversy in Britain
Read “The Age of Romanticism” (L-LXVI), the first 3 sections
Paine, from Common Sense (6-8)
Read “The French Revolution” (64-66), excerpts from Richard Price, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, and William Godwin (66-84)
Literary Terms: essay, parallelism, anaphora, metaphor, rhetorical questions
Timeline of the Revolution Controversy
Further excerpt from Wollstonecraft (just read the Vindication of the Rights of Men section)
Tuesday Writing Prompt: In the reading for today, which words and ideas are in contention? What literary techniques do these writers employ when in dialogue with one another? See literary terms above and discuss at least two of the assigned terms in your response.
Please Respond to this prompt on ELC
Thursday, August 24th / Continue discussion of Revolution Controversy Material
Read Anna Letitia Barbauld, “To the Poor” (32)
Thomas Spence, “The Rights of Man for Me: A Song” (link to BABL online resource with PDF. You’ll need your access code to login.)
Literary Terms: anaphora, apostrophe, heroic couplets, poetic “turn”
For in-class discussion: John Taylor’s “The Trumpet of Liberty”
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Tuesday, August 29th
William Blake, from Songs of Innocence (Frontispiece Image), Title page for Songs of Innocence, “Introduction”, “The Ecchoing Green” (2 images), “The Lamb,” “The Little Black Boy,” “The Divine Image,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” and “Holy Thursday”, 1789, (Plain text in Broadview beginning on pg. 86)
from Songs of Innocence and Experience, Title Page, Frontispiece, Songs of Experience title page, “Introduction,” “Holy Thursday”, “The Chimney Sweeper,” “The Tyger“, “London,” , “The Human Abstract,” and “The Voice of the Ancient Bard,” pub. with Songs of Innocence, 1794 and Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1789 and 1794, (Plain text in Broadview beginning on pg. 96)
There are links to the Blake Archive on the website for all of these poems and the plate engravings associated with them. Please see the website for today’s reading. You will also find plain text in the anthology)
Literary Terms: heroic couplet, ballad, lyric, rhyme, stanza
More from Blake:
“Without contraries is no progression” (Plate 3)
“Where man is not nature is barren” (Plate 10)
“Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human heart” (Plate 11)
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite” (Plate 14)
You’ll find your writing prompt on ELC this week and every Tuesday going forward.
Thursday, August 31st
For class discussion: We will continue discussing Songs of Innocence and Experience and then look over the material from below.
Comparison of America Plate 4 images
“A Song of Liberty” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Feel free to look over Blake’s, America (link to Blake Archive), link to BABL online resource with PDF. You’ll need your access code to login.
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