Enlightenment and Romanticism: the Writing of Pleasure, 1750-1830

Dr Rowan Rose Boyson

This course is an introduction to Enlightenment and Romantic literature and thought, and it focuses on the idea of pleasure in the period. It explores why pleasure became a major theme of writing in this period, considering cultural, intellectual, and theological factors. It will feature some of the most important philosophical arguments about pleasure in the European Enlightenment: those of Rousseau, Kant, Wollstonecraft and Bentham. Alongside these we shall set ancient and modern theories of pleasure, from Aristotle and Epicurus to Freud, Adorno and Zizek. And we will read a wide range of British Romantic poetry, especially that of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, to consider how pleasure is both a topic, and a theory, of poetry in the Romantic period.

This course is aimed at: Students majoring in English, but also in History and Philosophy. Other enthusiastic students (they have included economists and nutritionists) who would like to study literature are also welcome.

Pre-requisite knowledge required: No specific knowledge is assumed, but some acquaintance with eighteenth-century and / or Romantic-period writing would be beneficial.

Transferable Knowledge and Skills: The close-reading skills you develop will be useful for later studies in any Humanities subject, and will definitely be beneficial for any English major. You will also gain a general knowledge of cultural and intellectual history of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The knowledge you gain of theories of pleasure and happiness may be useful for your whole life.

Pre-Course Reading

• Leonard Katz, entry on Pleasure, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. by Peter France (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974)
• Wordsworth, William, ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballads’ (widely anthologised, including in the various editions of Duncan Wu’s Romanticism: An Anthology; the standard edition is in The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, ed. by W.J.B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974))

Full details of the reading to be undertaken each week during the course are available on the syllabus, along with extra suggestions for background reading

Assessment:

• 1 Mid Term Exam (Close reading of set passages): 10%
• 1 Final Exam (Close reading and comparisons of set passages): 45%
• 1 Final Essay (research-based): 45%

Lecture Hours: 12 x 1 hour 15 minutes (total 15 hours)

Seminar Hours: 8 x 1 hour 15 minutes (total 10 hours)