Eureka! Summer 2003 Workshops
Essential Romanticism: Teaching the Greater Romantic Lyric
Leader: Dr. Kyle Grimes
Date: Monday, June 16, 2003
Time: 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Place: Henley Room, Mervyn H. Sterne Library (Second Floor)
Abstract
Many of the most influential and frequently read romantic-period poems take
the form of, in M. H. Abrams' term, "The Greater Romantic Lyric." These
poems share certain formal features:
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The poem is set in some specifically identified location (typically
in some natural setting) and often on an explicitly mentioned date.
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The "content" of the poem consists of the poet/speaker's
meditations as he describes and considers the details of this locale and
then -- through a pattern of recollection and speculation -- wanders mentally from
the initial setting.
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The poem is structured according to the associative links of the
speaker's meditation (rather than according to, say, a narrative pattern).
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The poem offers some key philosophical -- even transcendental -- insight
which typically occurs about two-thirds of the way through the speaker's
meditations.
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The poem concludes by circling back on the natural descriptive
imagery from the opening lines.
Some selection of these generic elements can be seen in many of the most
famous poems of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. Thus, by
becoming familiar with the distinctive form and the peculiar beauty of the
Greater Romantic Lyric, readers will also be developing a firm conception
of the central issues of British Romantic literature in general.
This one-day seminar will begin with a general overview of the defining
features of the Greater Romantic Lyric. Seminarians will then break into
smaller groups, each of which will strive to discover how a particular poem
either exemplifies or alters these generic features. Following these group
sessions we will come together again to discuss the distinctive features
(and thus the distinct meanings) of the several poems on the reading
list. In other words, the seminar will begin with a discussion and
demonstration of what these poems have in common, but the emphasis will
then shift to focus on what makes each poem distinctive within the genre of
the Greater Romantic Lyric. The session will conclude with a survey of
some more recent critical analyses of the literature and of the whole
concept of a Greater Romantic Lyric and some pedagogical suggestions for
ways to make these poems interesting, meaningful, and even beautiful in the
eyes of high school students.
The following works will be made available (either online or in a photocopy
packet or both) to participants in the seminar:
Poems:
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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
The Eolian Harp
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
Frost at Midnight
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Wordsworth, William
Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
Ode: Intimations of Immortality
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Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Mont Blanc
Ode to the West Wind
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Keats, John
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Secondary materials:
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Abrams, M. H.
"Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric."
The Correspondent Breeze: Essays on English Romanticism.
New York: Norton, 1984. 76-108.
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Wordsworth, William
Excerpts from "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"
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