From Romance to Realism - 4 credits

Nineteenth-century Britain witnessed wide-scale social, political, and cultural upheaval: the French Revolution, the expansion of empire, naval dominance, massive political reforms, and ongoing debate about women. This course explores the great writings of the period, examining the transition from the Romanticism of the early part of the century, characterized by the writing of William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Jane Austen, and Sir Walter Scott, to the realism of the later century employed by such writers as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Robert Browning, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Students explore the tensions, gaps, and overlaps between these two categories—Romanticism and realism—and their place in the writing of the authors whose works are frequently labeled as Romantic or realist. The course emphasizes both the literature itself and the cultural forces from which the literature developed.