British Romantic Literature

The Romantic period in British Literature (roughly 1780-1832) stands at the nexus of the Enlightenment's promotion of commerce, reason, and liberty and the Victorian experience of industrialization and empire. Romanticism, as embodied in both artistic production and cultural reception, elevated aesthetic practice to an almost divine activity, a realm wherein the individual might forge his or her very self as an ethical, political, and creative being.

In recent decades, the field of Romantic studies has consistently produced some of the most influential and wide-ranging theoretical models for literary analysis and remains a vibrant and ever-progressing area of study. Our own work in the department has produced explorations of theatricality, museums, collections, nationalism, and the unique contribution of women writers from the period.  

Faculty

• Lori Branch
  • Wordsworth: spontaneity, ritual, & everyday life; violence & peaceful ethical /religious resistance
  • religion, secularity, and the rise of the novel
  • 18th-century British sentimental fiction
  • sentiment as ethical resistance
• Eric Gidal
  • poetry and aesthetic philosophy
  • literature and the visual arts
  • society and spectacle
  • travel literature
• Judith Pascoe
  • drama, theatre history, and theatricality
  • collectors and collecting exhibitions
  • women poets