Liz Rackley
email: erack01@emory.edu
mailbox: English Dept., 3rd floor North Callaway
British Romantic Landscapes
Course Overview:
In the eighteenth century, British poets and artists searched the countryside for the following: beautiful and perfectly ordered natural objects, picturesque unity in a variety of landscape elements, and sublimity in the vastness of the land. One can attribute this cult of nature to, among other causes, reverberations of Lorrain and Poussin's artwork, the success of Thomson's The Seasons, as well as to the popularity of travel in this period. This course will look at this cultural background for Romantic landscape art and poetry to discover that the pictorial landscapes are not purely topographical representations and that the literary landscapes are not purely literal descriptions; rather, both represent particular views of nature shaped by ideology as well as the artist's or poet's education in the pastoral myth. We will ask such questions of landscape art and poetry as: "What is the relationship between landscape and autobiography in this period?"; "How are the rural poor depicted?; "What does it mean to 'moralize' the landscape?," etc.
Required Texts:
- Heffernan, James A. W. The Re-Creation of Landscape: A Study of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Constable, and Turner. Hanover and London: UP of New England, 1984.
- Prepared poetry packet (pick up from the English office).
On Reserve:
- Barrell, John. The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in
English Painting, 1730-1840. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980.
- Fabricant, Carole. "The Aesthetics and Politics of Landscape in the 18th Century," Studies in Eighteenth-Century British Art and Aesthetics. ed. Ralph Cohen. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. (49-81).
- Monk, Samuel Holt. The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century England. New York: MLA, 1935.
- Walker, John. Turner. New York: Henry Abrams, Inc. Pub., 1983.
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Waterhouse, Ellis. Gainsborough. London: Springs Books, 1958.
- Artwork will be on the Internet or on reserve at Candler.
In treating of picturesque travel, we may consider first its object...Its object is beauty of every kind, which either art, or nature can produce: but it is chiefly ...picturesque beauty...This great object we pursue through the scenery of nature; and examine it by the rules of painting. We seek it among all the ingredients of landscape- trees-rocks-broken ground-woods -rivers-lakes-plains-vallies-mountains-and distance. (Gilpin, Essay II: On Picturesque Travel)
Antecedents: Moralized Landscapes
Week One: Introduction; "Sapientiae Libertas," depiction of Horace's "Satire II"; Agriculturae Beatitudo," depiction of Horace's "Epode II"; Claude Lorrain selected paintings; Nicolas Poussin The Shepherds of Arcadia, Landscape with Orpheus and Eurydice; Alexander Pope "Windsor Forest"
For Discussion: What examples can you find of allegory or myth in these classical and neoclassical pastorals? What function do they have? What religious significance?
Week Two: Thomson "Summer" and "Winter" from The Seasons; Oliver Goldsmith "The Deserted Village"
Group 1 responses due
Discussion question: How has the value of land shifted in this era?
Antecedents: Landscapes of Introspection and Sensibility
Week Three: Thomas Gray "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"; William Blake illustration of Gray's "Elegy"; Anne Finch "Nocturnal"; Thomas Wharton the Younger "The Pleasures of Melancholy"
Reports Due
Discussion questions: What is the relationship of the contemplative poet to the countryside? What is the pleasure in melancholy and solitude?
The Picturesque, The Beautiful, and The Sublime
Week Four: Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful(1757); William Gilpin from Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel; and On Sketching Landscape; Thomas Gainsborough Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, Mary, Countess Howe
Criticism: Samuel Monk The Sublime, Chapter 5 (on reserve)
Romantic Landscapes
Week Five: William Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience; William Wordsworth "Michael" and "Tintern Abbey"
Criticism: Heffernan Chapter 1 "Landscape and the Triangulation of the Arts"
Paper #1 Due
For Discussion: What is the Romantic poet's problem with the sister arts tradition (as a painting so a poem)? What about images do they distrust?
Week Six: Coleridge "This Limetree Bower, My Prison"; Charlotte Turner Smith "Beachy Head"
Criticism: continue with Heffernan Chapter 1 "Landscape and the Triangulation of the Arts"
Reports due
Discussion question: What is the relationship of Romantic autobiography to landscape?
Week Seven: William Wordsworth "Michael"; John Langhorne "The Evening Primrose"; John Constable The Cornfield(in Heffernan), The Leaping Horse, The White Horse, Dedham Vale
Criticism: Carole Fabricant "The Aesthetics and Politics of Landscape in the 18th Century" (on reserve)
Recommended Criticism: readings in John Barrell The Dark Side of the Landscape (on reserve)
Discussion questions: Who are the figures in the landscape? What is the poet's or artist's relationship to them? Also: How is time depicted (as cyclical, as unchanging, as radically moving)?
Week Eight: Break
Week Nine: Review
Mid-Term Exam
Week Ten: Wordsworth "The Solitary Reaper," "Nutting"; Dorothy Wordsworth from The Grasmere Journals
Criticism: Heffernan Chapter 3 "The Internalization of Prospect"
Week Eleven: Percy Shelley "Mont Blanc"; J. M. W. Turner Buttermere Lake: A Shower and other selected paintings; Fuseli Macbeth and the Witches
Criticism: continue with Heffernan Chapter 3 "The Internalization of Prospect"
For discussion: How do Shelley and Turner internalize sublimity?
Week Twelve: J. M. W. Turner Fishermen at Sea and other selected paintings; Caspar David Friedrich selected paintings; Wordsworth Conclusion to The Prelude
Final Paper Due
For discussion: How does Turner's vision of nature terribilita compare to Wordsworth's vision of the sublime tranquility of landscape? Also, how is light and tone used to create effect?
Week Thirteen: John Clare "The Peasant Poet," "Pastoral Poesy," "The Mores," "Cottage Fears," "The Badger," and "The Fox"
Week Fourteen: Wrap up and Review
Final Exam
Grading System:
Paper #1 20%
Reports 10%
Participation 10%
Mid-Term 20%
Final Paper 20%
Final Exam 20%
Attendance and Participation: It is extremely important that you attend class and participate actively and enthusiastically. I expect you to arrive to class on time, and I will consider you discourteous if you do not. Missing more than two classes, excused or unexcused, will cause your participation grade to go down by one half letter grade for each day over; for example, missing four days will cause you to receive a B+ attendance grade. Students observing religious holidays will not be penalized for absences on those days.
Reports: I will also ask you to do two research projects related to the course material.
Office Visits and Conferences: I will be happy to meet with you during office hours to discuss your papers or anything else, so please feel free to come by to chat. I will also hold certain hours just for conferencing on papers. During these visits, I will not tell you how to get an "A" on your papers; I will, however, be more than pleased to answer specific questions.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Cheating in any form will result in a "F" for the course and a report to the Academic Dean. Plagiarism is presenting someone else's ideas as your own. This includes failure to document research properly or failure to paraphrase properly.
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