British Poetry Special Lecture
I (G12042-01)
Spring 2020
Chankil Park(ckpark@ewha.ac.kr,
316 Humanities Bd., Office Hour: Thursday 14:00-15:00, Tel: 02-3277-2160)
Class: Humanities 201, Thursday 12:30-15:15
Topic: Sympathy and the Poetry of Sensibility
In this course, we
are going to explore the idea of ‘sympathy’ in the works of the
eighteenth-century British philosophers such as Shaftesbury, Lord Kames, Hutcheson,
Hume, and Smith. Wordsworth wanted to renovate the corrupted sensibility of the
contemporary middle-class reading public by inaugurating a new kind of poetry
provocatively defined as “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Wordsworth’s
revolutionary poetics eulogizing the value of feelings in poetry is in fact
firmly buttressed by his moral aspiration which might be described as a morally
exalted aestheticism. The idea of sympathy conceived and established as a
philosophical precept by the philosophers of the 18th century
Britain lies at the very core of Wordsworthian formulation of such an
oxymoronic definition of poetry, which is why we read them in this course. The
other agenda we have in this seminar is the poetics of sensibility,
particularly that of the 1790s. Inspired by Jerome McGann(The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style) and
Chris Jones(Radical Sensibility:
Literature and ideas in the 1790s), we will read a selection of poems and
proses produced during ‘the age of sensibility’ by Thomas Gray, William
Collins, Thomas Chatterton, William Cowper, Charlotte Smith, Helena Maria
Williams, and Hannah More. The poetry reading session in the second half of the
semester is justified with a thought that these poets, along with Wordsworth
himself, did inherit the liberal idea of ‘sympathy’ from the philosophers of
earlier decades, making a literary and cultural environment in which
Wordsworth’s revolutionary poetics was engendered.
Texts: A coursepack will be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Evaluation: Two Essay proposals 20%, Attendance and Class
Performance 10%, One Term Paper 70%
Language in Class: Korean
Online Seminar
Due to the recent
Corona 19 virus problem, the first two weeks (March 19, 26 and April 2, 9) will
be conducted online without a classroom attendance. The online seminars will be
held at the same class (Thursday 12:30-15-15) with a real time streaming
service provided by the Google Hangout Meet. There will be a test run for all
the participants the time of which will be announced before the term begins.
Tentative Reading Schedule
March
19 Introduction
I: Wordsworth and the Idea of Sympathy in the tradition of the 18th
century British philosophy
26 Thomas
Hobbes, selections from Human Nature
and Bernard Mandeville, selections from An
Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue
April
2 Anthony
Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, selections from Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times.
9 Francis
Hutcheson, selections from An Inquiry
into the Original of Our ideas of Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises
16 David Hume, selections from A Treatise of Human Nature
23 Adam Smith, selections form The Theory of Moral Sentiments
May
7 Sophie de Grouchy, selections from Letters on Sympathy
14
21 Introduction II: Wordsworth and the Age of Sensibility: A Survey
28 Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard,” “The Progress of Poesy, A Pindaric Ode,” “A Bard A Pindaric Ode”
June
4 Thomas Chatterton, “Mynstrelles Songe, from AElla,” “Stay, curious traveler,” “An Excelente Balade of Charitie”
11 Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village”
18 George
Crabbe, The Village , Book I
25 William Cowper, The Task Book I, Helena Maria Williams, “To Dr Moore,”
“A Hymn written among the Alps”
Select References
Jerome McGann. The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in
Literary Style. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.
Chris Jones. Radical Sensibility: Literature and ideas in
the 1790s. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
John Mullan. Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of
Feeling in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
Felicity Nussbaum & Laura
Brown eds. The New 18th Century: Theory, Politics, English
Literature. New York: Methuen, 1987.
Maxmillian E. Novak. Eighteenth-Century English Literature.
Frome, Somerset: Macmillan, 1983.
John Sitter ed. The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth
Century Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.
