The artistic energies and intellectual currents of the Romantic movement cross national boundaries and reflect the political and social upheavals of an increasingly globalised world.
This module examines key works of English, Scottish, and European Romanticism and investigates the forms (paintings, poems, plays, novels, translations) through which Romantic ideas and literary practices were transmitted from one country to another.
Diverse strands in British Romanticism, including works by Burns, Byron, Clare, Percy and Mary Shelley, Smith, Wordsworth, are analysed alongside continental texts in translation including Rousseau's Confessions, De Stael’s Corrine, Goethe’s Werther, and Foscolo’s Jacopo Ortis.
Topics to be explored include confessional and fictional autobiography, the struggle between imperial power and national independence, the idea of cosmopolitanism in a period of revolution and war, and how travel and sociability facilitate international exchange.
