Annotation
OBJECTIVES
This course dedicated to Keats consists of three main sections. The first section deals with the symbolic structure of the major lyrical poems: “Sleep and Poetry,” the six odes (“Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode on Indolence,” “Ode on Melancholy,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode to Psyche” and “To Autumn”) and selected sonnets. The second section concentrates on the problems of gender, genre, tradition and sexuality in The Eve of St Agnes and Lamia, and symbol, narrative and textuality in the epic fragments of Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. The closing section is devoted to getting to grips with Keats’s letters and the reception of his work (by his contemporaries and subsequent major critics): designed as a series of reading group assignments, we will review Keats’s aesthetic opinions voiced in his letters to George and Georgiana Keats, Benjamin Haydon, J.H. Reynolds and others, and their reflection by both early-19th-century and recent critics (Paul de Man, Marjorie Levinson, Nicholas Roe, Neil Fraistat, Andrew Bennett, Jeffrey Cox, Anne Mellor, Jack Stillinger, Susan Wolfson and others).
PROCEDURE
Sessions will start with short presentations (10 minutes) given by students on the secondary texts assigned in the week-by-week schedule. There might be two presentations per seminar, so please keep to the time frame.
ASSESSMENT
Credits will be given on the basis of students’ short presentations, their participation in seminar discussion and the reading-group assignments, and a final essay (2500 words) whose topic has to be discussed with the instructor.
MA students who wish to sign up for the graded paper (AAALA007B) will submit one long essay of 3500-4000 words to receive their course credits & graded paper credits. An outline with a brief bibliography for the graded paper needs to be discussed with the instructor.
Erasmus students sign up for the ERASMUS course code (AAALA007AE), and will receive their grade for their seminar work and a final essay (2500 words). Transcript deadlines apply for essay submission
Suggested secondary reading:
John Baker, “Dialectics and Reduction: Keats Criticism and “Ode to a Nightingale””, Studies in Romanticism 27 (1988) 109-128.
John Barnard, “Keats’s Letters,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 120-134.
Andrew Bennett, “The ‘Hyperion’ Poems,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 643-652.
Alan Bewell, “‘To Autumn’ and the Curing of Space,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 634-642.
Harold Bloom, “Gardens of the Moon,” in The Visionary Company (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971) 363-367.
James Chandler, “An ‘1819 Temper’: Keats and the History of Psyche,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 625-633.
Jeffrey N. Cox, “Lamia, Isabella and The Eve of St Agnes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 53-68.
William Fitzgerald, “Keats's Sonnets and the Challenge of Winter, ” Studies in Romanticism, 26:1 (1987) 59-83.
Neil Fraistat, “‘Lamia’ Progressing: Keats’s 1820 Volume,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 592-603.
Geoffrey Hartman, The Fate of Reading and Other Essays (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985) (“The Interpreter: A Self-Analysis” 3-19, “I.A. Richards and the Dream of Communication” 20-40, “Spectral Symbolism and Authorial Self in Keats’s Hyperion” 57-73, “Poem and Ideology: The Study of Keats’s ‘To Autumn’” 124-46, “Evening Star and Evening Land” 147-78.
Margaret Homans, “Keats Reading Women: Women Reading Keats,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 563-572.
Theresa M. Kelley, “Keats and ‘Ekphrasis,’” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 170-185.
Marjorie Levinson, The Romantic Fragment Poem: A Critique of a Form (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1986) 167-187 (chapter 10: “The Dependent Fragment: Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion”)
Marjorie Levinson, “Keats’ Life of Allegory: The Origins of a Style,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 547-554.
Anne K. Mellor, “Keats and the Complexities of Gender,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 214-229.
Vincent Newey, “Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion and Keats’s Epic Ambitions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 69-85.
Alan Richardson, “Keats and Romantic Science,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 230-245.
Nicholas Roe, “Lisping Sedition: Poems, Endymion and the Poetics of Dissent,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 563-572.
Grant F. Scott, “The Muse in Chains: Keats, Dürer and the Politics of Form”, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 34:4 (1994) 771-793.
Grant F. Scott, “Keats in His Letters,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 555-563.
Paul D. Sheats, “Keats and the Ode,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 86-101.
Jack Stillinger, “The Hoodwinking of Madeline: Skepticism in The Eve of St Agnes,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 604-613.
Susan J. Wolfson, “Late Lyric,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 102-119.
Duncan Wu, “Keats and the ‘Cockney School,’” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 37-52.
* For Czech students: Martin Procházka, Romantismus a osobnost (Prague: Kruh moderních filologů, 1996), chapters 1 (conclusion) and 3 (part “Epické fragmenty”).
