English 3380

English Romantic Period

Shorter Project Assignment Menu

You will complete three shorter projects this term, one apiece on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Byron,
Shelley, or Keats (you may choose which three of these poets to skip). Topics and approaches must be
chosen from the "menu" below. You may do only one Powerpoint presentation and develop only one set
of critical discussion topics. Unless otherwise indicated, the final product should be about 1200 words
(four or five double-spaced pages).

Wordsworth
● Compare Wordsworth’s “old men” as they appear in three poems.
● Read the Wikipedia biographical sketch of John Stuart Mill, then read the excerpt from
Mill’s Autobiography Chapter 5 (Blackboard > Assignments > Short Projects), where he
describes the curative effect of Wordsworth’s poetry on his depression at age 20-21. In a
carefully crafted essay, discuss what poems you think Mill has in mind as he describes
Wordsworth’s qualities and their effects.
● Choose two of Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads that we haven’t discussed in class and
explain in detail how they present opportunities for reader-based tale-making (i.e.,
“perhaps a tale you’ll make it”).
● Carefully read through the "Response" texts that follow Lyrical Ballads in the Longman
Anthology (429–35), and comment on the points made by Jeffrey and Lamb.
● Create a multi-media Powerpoint presentation (perhaps 8–10 slides offering text,
images, animation, audio) that documents/evaluates the changes that Wordsworth made
to a passage between the 1805 (13 Book) Prelude to the 1850 (14 Book) Prelude.
Choose from:
○ the “correspondent breeze” passage (Book 1)
○ the “raven’s nest” passage (Book 1)
○ the “blessed babe passage (Book 2)
○ the “Simplon Pass” episode (Book 6)
(The 1805 text is used in our Longman Anthology; 1850 texts of these passages are on
Blackboard > Assignments > Short Projects.)

Coleridge
● Examine Gustav Doré’s engraved illustrations of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” How
does Doré “read” and interpret Coleridge’s poem? What has he chosen to emphasize, or
add, or downplay, or ignore? In what themes does he seem most interested? What
symbols does he use? In other words, what does Doré seem to be saying about what
Coleridge seems to be saying?
● Read Coleridge’s prose fragment “The Wanderings of Cain” and discuss its relation to
other Coleridge works we’ve read.
● Read Mary Robinson's poem "To the Poet Coleridge" (604–606), written in response to
reading "Kubla Khan." (Read also about Robinson, 273–74.) Write a careful description
of Robinson's reaction to Coleridge's poem. What is she responding to, and how? Can
her poem be taken as an interpretation of sorts? A review? An appreciation?
 ● Write a "conversation"- style poem (perhaps 30 lines), following the basic features and
patterns that we've outlined in class, and that M. H. Abrams discusses below:
"Some of the poems [Romantic lyrics] are called odes, while the others
approach the ode in having lyric magnitude and a serious subject, feeling
fully meditated. They present a determinate speaker in a particularized,
and usually a localized, outdoor setting, whom we overhear as he carries
on, in a fluent vernacular which rises easily to a more formal speech, a
sustained colloquy, sometimes with himself or with the outer scene, but
more frequently with a silent human auditor, present or absent. The
speaker begins with a description of the landscape; an aspect or change
of aspect in the landscape evokes a varied but integral process of
memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling which remains closely
intervolved with the outer scene. In the course of this meditation the lyric
speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral
decision, or resolves an emotional problem. Often the poem rounds upon
itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood
and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening
meditation."
— M. H. Abrams on "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric" (1965)

● Create a multi-media Powerpoint presentation (perhaps 8-10 slides offering text, images,
animation, audio) that offers an engaged, coherent, creative interpretation of
“Christabel.”

Blake
● Using the Blake Archive as your base source, explicate three problematic relationships
between word and image in one plate from one of Blake's Songs, or one problematic
relationship that appears in two or three plates. Be sure to indicate exactly which plates
you are working with; e.g., "copy B, 1789, 1794 (British Museum)," etc.
●

Byron
● Develop a set of 20 critical discussion and writing topics to guide a group of readers in
thinking about Byron's Manfred and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Use my topics on
Wordsworth (UTC Online > Assignments > Short Projects) as a guide to depth and
development of your own topics on Byron. (Note, for example, that the questions
develop from one another.)
● Carefully read through the "Response" texts that follow Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in the
Longman Anthology (713–15), and comment on the points made by Wilson and Scott.
● Nineteenth-century composers Hector Berlioz and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky both
composed music inspired by Byron's poems. Listen to Berlioz's Harold en Italie (1834)
and Tchaikovsky's Manfred symphony (1885), do a little research on each, and compare
their approaches to rendering the "Byronic mood."
Shelley
● Discuss Shelley in relation to Wordsworth using their prose essays ("Preface" to Lyrical
Ballads and "A Defense of Poetry"), or the form and content of "Tintern Abbey" and
"Mont Blanc."
● Develop a set of 20 critical discussion and writing topics to guide a group of readers in
thinking about Shelley's "Julian and Maddalo" and "The Witch of Atlas". Use my topics
on Wordsworth (UTC Online > Assignments > Short Projects) as a guide to depth and
development of your own topics on Shelley. (Note, for example, that the questions
develop from one another.)
● Using your expertise in Romanticism and the Shelley-Byron circle, write a joint critical
review of two films about the Summer of 1816 on Lake Geneva: Gothic (Ken Russell,
1986) and Haunted Summer (Ivan Passer, 1988). Naturally, we don't expect such films
to be documentaries, so discuss their relative value as interpretations of the "second
generation" of Romantic writers.

Keats
● Using the online Oxford English Dictionary, investigate the historical development of the
word "romance," and why Keats called "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "Lamia" might qualify
as romances. Given what you discover, what other works on our syllabus might be
considered romances of one sort or another?
● Could Keats's "Great Odes" of 1819 be considered "conversation" poems like
Coleridge's, in general form and/or manner? If so, how? If not, what significant
differences separate them? Focus your discussion on two odes.
● Do some research on the Spenserian stanza form, and then compare Keats's use of it in
"The Eve of St. Agnes" to Byron's in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. What does the stanza
allow each poet to do? How do they use it similarly, or differently?
● Comment on Keats's letter writing — the kinds of subjects he takes up, for example, or
his language, or ways, perhaps, that the letters help Keats develop ideas by writing to
different correspondents.