Aims
This course aims to:
• find parallels and similarities between the two authors
• investigate how the authors present human psychology and moral codes
• examine the poetic voice in their poems
Content
Blake and Wordsworth are two of the great poets of the first generation of ‘Romantic’ writing. The word, Romantic, is now used to describe mainly poetry written at the end of the 18th century and in the early 19th century, but to themselves they were iconoclasts, part of the revolutionary mood of the later 1700s. They wanted a poetry that could speak of hope, but also depression and importantly one that could speak of politics. And they also wanted it to be written in plainer language, the language of children, the language of the excluded.
These demands that they set themselves were part of their reaction to the huge changes that the 18th century brought, signalled by the French Revolution and the American War of Independence. Blake, for example, wrote poems about America and France, Wordsworth went to live in revolutionary France. Yet for all their embracing of a Utopian future, they both looked back with nostalgia to a disappearing Agrarian past. However, stylistically, they both left behind the poetic language of the earlier 18th century, which, at its extreme, seemed to speak only in certainties couched in artifice, moving it from ratiocination and into feeling.
As a result, we today think of poetry as emotional, socially observant, plainer in its language and willing to be allusive. These two poets are as vibrant as they were over 200 years ago and in this course we will study certain of their most demanding poems to hear how much they still have to say to us.
Presentation of the course
The course will mix lecture with guided questions and class discussion.
Course sessions
1. Blake - Songs of Innocence
We will start the course by looking at Blake’s presentation of childhood and rural settings as well as his poetics.
2. Blake - Songs of Experience, part 1
We will look at Blake’s sense of the tragedy in human nature and his use of symbolism.
3. Blake - Songs of Experience, part 2
We will look at how Blake presents gender and family and his poetic voice.
4. Wordsworth - Lines written in early spring, The tables turned, A slumber did my spirit seal
We will examine how Wordsworth views nature and the human mind’s relation to it.
5. Wordsworth - Strange fits of passion, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
We will look at Wordsworth’s sense of the vagaries and the tragedies of the human mind.
Learning outcomes
You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course are:
• to become aware of the politics within the poetry
• to become aware of the register and voice used in the poetry
• to understand the term ‘Romantic’
Required reading
*Blake - Selected Poetry (any edition)
*Wordsworth - Selected Poetry (any edition)
