ENGLISH 550 The Drama of British Romanticism

Fall 1999, T 1:30-4:20

Esther Schor x408O, eschor@princeton.edu

I Required Texts, available at Micawber Books, 110- 114 Nassau Street:
a) Rousseau. Politics and The Arts [Letter to M D'Alembert on the Theatre]. Cornell
b) Austen. Mansfield Park Penguin
c) P. B. Shelley. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Norton
d) Shakespeare. Macbeth. Arden
e) Reader A--Primary Works
f) Reader B--Secondary Readings
both readers available only at Pequod, 6 Nassau Street

II Readings:

WEEK 1 Rousseau: Letter to M D'Alembert on the Theatre (1758)
[A: Addison (1711-12), Johnson (1765), optional]

WEEK 2 A: Wordsworth, The Borderers (1795-6)
B: Jewett, "The Claim of Compulsion: The Borderers" (1997)

WEEK 3 A: Coleridge, 0sorio/Remorse (1797)
A: The Romantic Shakespeare 1: Coleridge on Shakespeare
B: Carlson, "A Stage for Potential Men" (1994)

WEEK 4 A: Baillie, Introductory Discourse, De Montfort, Count Basil (1798)
B: Burroughs, "Joanna Baillie's Theater of the Closet" (1997)

WEEK 5 A: Inchbald, The Massacre (1792), Lovers' Vows (1798), Remarks for The British Theatre (1806-9)
B: Carlson, "Romantic Antitheatricalism" (1994)

WEEK 6 Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)
B: Litvak, "The Infection of Acting" (1992)

MIDTERM BREAK

WEEK 7 A: The Romantic Shakespeare 11: The Case of Macbeth
Inchbald, Lamb, Hazlitt, Coleridge, DeQuincey, Jameson
B: Jacobus, "'That Great Stage Where Senators Perform"' (1989)

WEEK 8 A: The Romantic Shakespeare III: Critics
Hazlitt, from "On Milton and Shakespeare"(1818), from Characters of Shakespeare's Plays [1817] and A View of the English Stage (1818);
Lamb, "On Some of the Old Actors" (1823), "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century"(1823), "My First Play" (1823), "Stage Illusion" (1833), "Sanity of True Genius" (1833);
Keats, Letters (1817-20)
B: Bate, "Criticism" (1989)

WEEK 9 Shelley, The Cenci (182 1)
B: Behrendt, "Beatrice Cenci and the Tragic Myth of History" (1990)
B: Jewett, "Performing Skepticism: The Cenci" (1997)

WEEK 10 Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820); A: Byron, Cain (1821)
B: Benjamin, "Trauerspiel and Tragedy" (excerpts) (1928/trans. 1977)

WEEK I I A: Byron, Manfred (1817), Sardanapalus (1821)
B: Wolfson, "A Problem Few Dare Imitate': Sardanapalus and 'Effeminate Character'" (1991)
B: Christensen, "Byron's Sardanapalus and the Triumph of Liberalism" (1992)

WEEK 12 A: Byron, Marino Faliero (1821), The Two Foscari (1821)
B: Simpson, "The Matter of Political Drama" (excerpts) (1998)

III Assignments:
a) Two seminar starters, 1-2 pages.
b) One 8-10 minute oral presentation on a critical article.
c) One term paper or two 10- 12 page papers.
d) e-list participation ad lib.