Academics

The program provides an opportunity to earn three hours of graded credit.

ENGL 249H: Romantic Literature and Contemporary Issues: British Romancism and the Environmental Imagination (3 Credits)

Professor: Joe Fletcher
Making Connections: Literary Arts (LA), North Atlantic World (NA)
IDEAs in Action: FC-AESTH

The British Romantic period (~1789-1834) witnessed both a poltical revolution, in the overthrow of the French monarchy, and an aesthetic revolution, as the ideas proclaimed in William Wordsworth’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads upended prevailing literary values. These ideological transformations continue to influence our contemporary ideas about literature, art, politics, and the environment. Notably, insofar as this course is concerned, Romantic attitudes toward the natural world gave rise to modern conservation efforts and environmental movements.

In this course we will explore how landscape shapes literary imagination, and how Romantic conceptions of urban and rural environments are still with us today. Our time will be split between London, which offers an abundance of historical, literary, and artistic sites which will enrich our understanding of Romanticism’s historical context, and Oxford, nestled in a bucolic rural setting and showcasing a storied academic tradition.