Fall 2019 | Harvard University
Selected texts in three national traditions: Cleridge, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, and Keats in English; Kant, Schiller, and Goethe in German; Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman in American Literature. Additional writers may include Robert Lowth, the Schlegels, Novalis, Schleiermacher, and Margaret Fuller. Attention to exchange among these literatures. Additional current scholarship and criticism.
General
This course approaches comparative Romanticism by examining several works of selected writers. The approach is by no means exhaustive. Seminar members should do additional reading. For example, Rousseau is not on the syllabus in a prominent way, yet Romanticism cannot be grasped absent acquaintance with his writings, not only literary works such as the Confessions, Émile, and La Nouvelle Héloïse but also his cultural and social writing, including the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, the Discourse on Inequality, and the Social Contract. Writers such as Scott, Novalis, Fichte, De Quincey, and Schopenhauer are not on the syllabus but could be. With twelve meetings, we don’t have time to be as thorough as the subject demands. Seminar members may wish to concentrate for a presentation and research paper on authors and texts not on the syllabus.
Readings
Coleridge, S.T. (1983) Biographia Literaria (2 vols. in 1). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wordsworth, W. (2014) Poetry and Prose. New York: W.W. Norton.
Coleridge, S.T. (2004) Poetry and Prose. New York: W.W. Norton.
Schelling, F.W.J. (1989) Philosophy of Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Schelling, F.W.J. (1978) System of Transcendental Idealism. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia / Ingram.
Kant, I. (1951) Critique of Judgment. New York: Hafner Publishing Company.
Schiller, F. (1982) On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goethe, J.W. von (1986) Essays on Art and Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hegel, G.W.F. (1975) Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Emerson, R.W. (2001) Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. New York: W.W. Norton.
Thoreau, H.D. (1975) The Portable Thoreau. New York: Viking Press.
Fuller, M. (1992) The Essential Margaret Fuller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wollstonecraft, M. (1997) The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
Bate, W.J. (ed.) (1970) Criticism: The Major Texts. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Leitch, V.B. et al. (eds.) (2001) The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton.
Weekly Readings
Sept 4
Rousseau, J.-J. (1781) The Confessions (excerpts).
Wordsworth, W. (1800) Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
Schlegel, F. (1798) Athenäum Fragmente 116, 238; Gespräch über die Poesie.
Sept 11
Schlegel, F. (1970) “Literature and National Character,” in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 413–415, 423–427.
Goethe, J.W. von (1986) “On World Literature,” in Essays on Art and Literature. pp. 224–228.
Wordsworth, W. (1800/1802) Preface to Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems.
Coleridge, S.T. (1983) Biographia Literaria, Vol. 1 (Editor’s Introduction, Ch. 4); Vol. 2 (Chs. 14, 15, 17–20).
Sept 18
Wordsworth, W. (1970) Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems.
Coleridge, S.T. (1970) “On Poesy or Art,” in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 357–364, 393–399.
Schelling, F.W.J. (1989) “On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature,” in Philosophy of Art, pp. 23–82.
Sept 25
Goethe, J.W. von (1986) “Simple Imitation, Manner, Style,” “Winckelmann and His Age,” “On Interpreting Aristotle’s Poetics,” in Essays on Art and Literature, pp. 71–74, 99–121, 197–199.
Goethe, J.W. von (1970) Conversations with Eckermann, in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 399–405.
Schlegel, F. (1970) “The Subject-Matter of Poetry,” in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts,, pp. 426–427.
Coleridge, S.T. (1970) “On Imagination” and commentary on Shakespeare, in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 386–392.
Goethe, J.W. von (1986) “Shakespeare: A Tribute” and “Shakespeare Once Again,” in Essays on Art and Literature, pp. 163–174.
Schlegel, A.W. (1970) Commentary on Shakespeare, in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 415–423.
Emerson, R.W. (1850) “Shakespeare; or, The Poet,” in Representative Men (suggested reading).
Oct 2
Hazlitt, W. (1970) Selected essays, in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 282–330.
Keats, J. (1970) Letters and poems, in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 347–350. Additional: letters dated May 3, 1818 and Feb–May 1819.
Keats, J. (1817–1819) “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” “Ode to Psyche,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” The Fall of Hyperion.
Oct 9
Schiller, F. (1970) “On the Aesthetic Education of Man,” in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 405–407.
Shelley, P.B. (1970) A Defence of Poetry, in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 427–435.
Sidney, P. (1595) An Apologie for Poetrie, in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 77–106 (optional).
Oct 16
Wollstonecraft, M. (1997) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Fuller, M. (1992) Woman in the Nineteenth Century, in The Essential Margaret Fuller.
Oct 23
Kant, I. (1951) Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment, in Critique of Judgment.
Schaper, E. (1992) “Taste, Sublimity and Genius: The Aesthetic of Nature and Art,” in Guyer, P. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coleridge, S.T. (1970) “Principles of Genial Criticism,” in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 364–375.
Coleridge, S.T. (1818) Selections from The Friend
Oct 30
Kant, I. (1951) Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (continued).
Schelling, F.W.J. (1978) System of Transcendental Idealism, Introduction, §§1, 2, 5, 6.
Coleridge, S.T. (1983) Biographia Literaria, Vol. 1, Chs. 4, 10, 12–13 (Chs. 5–9 optional).
Nov 6
Hegel, G.W.F. (1975) Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol. 1, pp. 1–115, 153–177, 281–298, 517–529.
Goethe, J.W. von (1986) “Ancient and Modern,” in Essays on Art and Literature. pp. 90–93.
Schiller, F. (1970) “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry,” in Bate, W.J. (ed.) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 408–412.
Nov 13
Emerson, R.W. (2001) “The American Scholar,” “Divinity School Address,” “The Method of Nature,” “The Transcendentalist,” “The Poet,” “The Over-Soul,” in Emerson’s Prose and Poetry.
Nov 20
The work of Plato, Aristotle, and Spinoza are all germane to romantic theory, and Plato and Aristotle for poetic practice as well. For Plato and Aristotle’s Poetics, see Bate, W.J. (ed.) (1970) Criticism: The Major Texts, pp. 3–49.
Samples of Comparative and Other Useful Studies
Ellison, J. (1990) Delicate Subjects: Romanticism, Gender, and the Ethics of Understanding: Coleridge, Schleiermacher, and Fuller. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Abrams, M.H. (1953) The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Engell, J. (1981) The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chapman, G. (1966) Literary Criticism in England, 1660–1800. New York: Oxford University Press.
Maertz, G. (ed.) (1998) Cultural Interaction in the Romantic Age: Critical Essays in Comparative Literature. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Chao, S.-l. and Corrigan, J.M. (eds.) (2009) Romantic Legacies: The Canon in the Era of Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge.
Shaffer, E.S. (1980) "Kubla Khan" and the Fall of Jerusalem: The Mythological School in Biblical Criticism and Secular Literature, 1770–1880. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shaffer, E.S. (ed.) (2007) The Reception of S. T. Coleridge in Europe. London: Thoemmes Continuum.
McFarland, T. (1969) Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Simpson, D. (1993) Romanticism, Nationalism, and the Revolt Against Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Orsini, G. (1969) Coleridge and German Idealism: A Study in the History of Philosophy with Unpublished Materials from Coleridge’s Manuscripts. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Harvey, S. (2013) Transatlantic Transcendentalism: Coleridge, Emerson, and Nature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Wellek, R. (1955–1992) A History of Modern Criticism, 1750–1950. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kipperman, M. (1986) Beyond Enchantment: German Idealism and English Romantic Poetry. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kooy, M.J. (2002) Coleridge, Schiller, and Aesthetic Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Oergel, M. (ed.) (2002) (Re-)writing the Radical: Enlightenment, Revolution and Cultural Transfer in 1790s Germany, Britain and France. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Weisbuch, R. (1986) Atlantic Double-Cross: American Literature and British Influence in the Age of Emerson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Staël, Madame de (1813) De l’Allemagne. Paris. (Multiple English translations available.)
German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism
Nisbet, H.B. (ed.) (1985) German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Winckelmann, Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simpson, D. (ed.) (1984) German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wheeler, K. (ed.) (1984) German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: The Romantic Ironists and Goethe, Vol. III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simpson, D. (ed.) (1988) The Origins of Modern Critical Thought: German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism from Lessing to Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Some key British critics whom the Germans read:
Shaftesbury, A.A.C. (1711) Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. London.
Addison, J. (1711–1712) The Spectator Papers. London.
Lowth, R. (1753) De sacra poesi Hebraeorum. Trans. (1787) Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews.
Smith, A. (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments. London.
Hurd, R. (1762) Letters on Chivalry and Romance; (1765–66) “On the Idea of Universal Poetry.”
Warton, J. (1754) Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser. London.
Young, E. (1759) Conjectures on Original Composition. London.
Warton, T. (1774) “On the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe,” in History of English Literature. London.
Hartley, D. (1749) Observations on Man. London.
Priestley, J. (1762) A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism. London.
Percy, T. (1765) Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. London.
Duff, W. (1767) An Essay on Original Genius. London.
Blair, H. (1783) Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. London.
Morgann, M. (1777) Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff. London.
Some Anglophone writers who spread German thought and literature:
William of Norwich
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Thomas Love Beddoes
Thomas De Quincey
Margaret Fuller
Frederic Henry Hedge
James Marsh
George Ticknor
Some German and Continental writers influencing and influenced by Anglophone writers:
Leibniz, G.W.
Bodmer, J.K. and Breitinger, J.J. (the “Swiss Critics”)
Tetens, J.N.
Klopstock, G.F.
Winckelmann, J.J.
Wieland, C.M.
Lessing, G.E.
Jacobi, F.H.
Mendelssohn, M.
Some American writers who read widely, often as comparatists:
Emerson, Mary Moody (Almanacks, mss. Houghton Library)
Brown, Charles Brockden
Dennie, Joseph (The Port-Folio)
Bryant, William Cullen
Hawthorne, Nathaniel (The Marble Faun)
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth