This course explores one of the richest periods of literature in world history. The Romantic age (c. 1789-1830) produced extraordinary poets (Wordsworth, Keats), path-breaking novelists (Austen, Mary Shelley), and fascinating eccentrics. In less than fifty years, they revolutionized British literature and gave us the contemporary meaning of such keywords as “imagination,” “artist,” and “literature.” Reading widely, we will explore Romanticism’s roots in the eighteenth century; theories of poetry, beauty, and artistic inspiration; and the relationship of Romanticism to revolution, religion, and war. Fall (Group III)