ENGL 370 - Prophecy and Doubt: Romantic and Victorian British Poetry

Deeply troubled by accelerating change and alarming social upheaval, 19th century British poetry veers between prophecy and doubt, neither entirely sure of its vision nor willing to surrender hope. Perhaps even more than ourselves, the poets of this era felt keenly the forces of social fragmentation and the constriction of the human spirit by machinery and technology. Students start with fiery seers like William Blake or Percy Shelly, observe poets like Tennyson, Barrett-Browning, Arnold or the Rossettis wrestling with the role of the poet in modern society, and follow the self-described “last of the Romantics,” the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, as he prepares the way for modernism precisely by digging deeper yet into tradition.

Credits: 1
Prerequisites: None
Major/Minor Restrictions: None
Class Restriction: None
Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression
Liberal Arts CORE: None

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