Academics

ENGL 249H: Romantic Literature and Contemporary Issues: British Literature, Ecocriticism, and the Environmental Imagination (3 credits) 

IDEAs in Action: FC-AESTH

The British Romantic period (approximately 1789 to 1834) witnessed both a political revolution in the overthrow of the French monarchy and an aesthetic revolution, as the ideas proclaimed in William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads transformed prevailing literary values. These ideological shifts continue to shape contemporary ideas about literature, art, politics, and the environment. Romantic attitudes toward the natural world, in particular, laid the foundation for modern conservation efforts and environmental thought.

In this course, we will explore how Great Britain’s natural landscapes have shaped literary imagination and influenced conceptions of urban and rural environments from the Romantic period through the Victorian era and into the early Modernist period. Our time will be divided between London, the Lake District, and Oxford, destinations that have inspired generations of writers and remain central to Britain’s literary heritage. Through visits to museums, historic sites, and the homes of authors such as John Keats and William Wordsworth, alongside readings from writers including Mary Shelley, Christina Rossetti, Charles Darwin, Alfred Tennyson, Beatrix Potter, Thomas Hardy, and J. R. R. Tolkien, students will examine the enduring relationship between literature, place, and the environment.