ATS2422 · Romanticism and reason in the long eighteenth century

Overview

In this unit you will explore the revolution in thought that commenced in the eighteenth century and developed in the early nineteenth century, a movement that changed the course of literature. Texts both inform and are shaped by the debates of their age. New kinds of literature emerge. Innovative works embody and represent dialogues that were central to their historical contexts: dialogues between irrationality and reason, emotion and restraint, the familiar and the new, and Gothic and pastoral modes. You will study a range of innovative texts which connected literature with history, philosophy, and the visual arts. As modern readers, we can choose to encounter such texts aesthetically or as a means of gaining insight into the past. Depending on staff availability, you will primarily focus on either the rise of the Romantic aesthetic in literature, or on the concerns of the Romantic movement at its maturity.

Areas of study: Literary studies

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Within semester assessment: 100%

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

Learning outcomes

1. discuss the new ways of thinking about literature, the rational and the irrational, history and philosophy, civilisation and nature, that are articulated by authors on the syllabus;
2. locate and recognise, contextualise, analyse, critique and formulate hypotheses about a range of long eighteenth-century texts;
3. apply a close textual analysis to at least three works on the syllabus;
4. apply skills in the areas of literary research, textual analysis and interpretation;
5. communicate arguments effectively.

Workload

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.