Topic: The Romantics
ESSAY QUESTIONS
LENGTH: 1500 words
Instructions
? You do not need to rewrite the question before your answer, but please number your answers in accordance with the order of questions below.
? You must illustrate your answer with reference to one text by any author whose work you have studied so far (up to and including Week 8).
? You must draw closely on textual passages to support your answers.
TIP: The introduction to your anthology will be helpful for general information on the Romantic period, including social convention, literary convention, and debates about science and religion. Your assignment must include a list of Works Consulted.
1. Using at least two poems, with specific examples from each, demonstrate the ways in which the work of any TWO poets read up to Week 8 might be said to confirm or challenge common ideas about the concerns of the Romantic poets.
2. ?Wordsworth defined good poetry not merely as the overflow but as the ?spontaneous overflow? of feelings.? Discuss with reference to the work of TWO Romantic poets.
3. ?Romantic poems habitually endow the landscape with human life, passion, and expressiveness.? Discuss with reference to poems by TWO Romantic poets read up to Week 8.
List of Poets and Poems:
William Blake
– Lamb and Tyger
– Holy Thursday
– Chimney Sweep
– Divine Image, Human Abstract
– Little Black Boy
– The Sick Rose
– The Garden of Love
– Visions of the Daughters of Albion
Percy Bysshe Shelley
– To Wordsworth
– Mont Blanc
– Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
– Prometheus Unbound
– From a Defence of Poverty
John Keats
– To Homer
– Ode to Psyche
– Ode to a Nightingale
– Ode on a Grecian Urn
– Ode on Indolence
– The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
– Kubla Khan
– The Pains of Sleep
– To William Wordsworth
– On Fancy and imagination
– Mr Coleridge?s System of Philosophy
William Wordsworth
– Preface to Lyrical Ballads
– Three Years She Grew
– I travelled among unknown men
Anna Letitia Barbauld
– The Mouse?s Petition
– An Inventory of the Furniture
– Washing-Day
– The Caterpillar