Annotation
For current syllabus, see Moodle: https://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=2992
OBJECTIVES
This course dedicated to Keats consists of three main sections. The first section deals with the symbolic structure of the major lyrical poems: “Sleep and Poetry,” the six odes (“Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode on Indolence,” “Ode on
Melancholy,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode to Psyche” and “To Autumn”) and selected sonnets. The second, designed as a series of reading group assignments, reviews Keats’s aesthetic opinions voiced in his letters to
George and Georgiana Keats, Benjamin Haydon, J.H. Reynolds and others, and their reflection by both early- 19th-century and recent critics (Paul de Man, Marjorie Levinson, Nicholas Roe, Neil Fraistat, Andrew Bennett,
Jeffrey Cox, Anne Mellor, Jack Stillinger, Susan Wolfson and others). The third section concentrates on the problems of gender, genre, tradition and sexuality in “The Eve of St Agnes” and “Lamia,” and symbol, narrative and textuality in the epic fragments of “Hyperion” and “The Fall of Hyperion.”
New secondary material has been added on Moodle from the recently published collection of essays “Keats in
Context” (CUP, 2017), ed. by Michael O'Neill.
PROCEDURE
Sessions will start with short presentations (5-10 minutes) given by students on the texts assigned in the week- by-week schedule. There will be 2 presentations per seminar, so please keep to the time frame. In the event of online teaching only, please follow the instructions on Moodle.
ASSESSMENT
Credits will be given on the basis of students’ short presentations, their participation in weekly seminar discussions and the reading-group assignments, and a final essay (2500 words) whose topic has to be discussed with the instructor.
Students who sign up for the graded paper (AAALA006B) write 1 long essay (3500-4000 words) for both the course credit & graded paper – course credits are awarded on submission of long essay outline; the long essay topic has to be discussed with the instructor.
Erasmus students sign up for the course code ending in E (AAALA006AE), and receive a grade for their participation in seminar activities and the final essay (2500 words).
MATERIAL
Primary:
“Keats’s Poetry and Prose,” ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009).
Poetry: http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/john_keats_2012_7.pdf http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/keats/keats6x9.pdf
Letters: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=2063364
Annotated Selection: http://englishhistory.net/keats/letters.html
Noah Comet, An Electronic Concordance to Keats’s Poetry http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/keatsconcordance/
Suggested secondary reading:
John Baker, “Dialectics and Reduction: Keats Criticism and ‘Ode to a Nightingale’”, Studies in Romanticism 27
(1988) 109-128.
John Barnard, “Keats’s Letters,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001) 120-134.
Andrew Bennett, “The ‘Hyperion’ Poems,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London:
W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 643-652.
Alan Bewell, “‘To Autumn’ and the Curing of Space,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and
London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 634-642
Harold Bloom, “Gardens of the Moon, ” in The Visionary Company (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971) 363- 367.
James Chandler, “An ‘1819 Temper’: Keats and the History of Psyche,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N.
Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 625-633.
Jeffrey N. Cox, “Lamia, Isabella and The Eve of St Agnes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J.
Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 53-68.
William Fitzgerald, “Keats's Sonnets and the Challenge of Winter,” Studies in Romanticism, 26:1 (1987) 59-83.
Neil Fraistat, “‘Lamia’ Progressing: Keats’s 1820 Volume,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New
York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 592-603.
Geoffrey Hartman, The Fate of Reading and Other Essays (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985) (“The Interpreter: A Self-Analysis” 3-19, “I.A. Richards and the Dream of Communication” 20-40, “Spectral
Symbolism and Authorial Self in Keats’s Hyperion” 57-73, “Poem and Ideology: The Study of Keats’s ‘To Autumn’” 124-46, “Evening Star and Evening Land” 147-78.
Margaret Homans, “Keats Reading Women: Women Reading Keats,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N.
Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 563-572.
Theresa M. Kelley, “Keats and ‘Ekphrasis,’” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 170-185.
Marjorie Levinson, The Romantic Fragment Poem: A Critique of a Form (Chapel Hill and London: University of
North Carolina Press, 1986) 167-187 (chapter 10: “The Dependent Fragment: Hyperion and The Fall of
Hyperion”).
Marjorie Levinson, “Keats’ Life of Allegory: The Origins of a Style,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox
(New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 547-554.
Anne K. Mellor, “Keats and the Complexities of Gender,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J.
Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 214-229.
Vincent Newey, “Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion and Keats’s Epic Ambitions,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 69-85.
Alan Richardson, “Keats and Romantic Science,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 230-245.
Nicholas Roe, “Lisping Sedition: Poems, Endymion and the Poetics of Dissent,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed.
Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 563-572.
Grant F. Scott, “The Muse in Chains: Keats, Dürer and the Politics of Form”, Studies in English Literature 1500- 1900, 34:4 (1994) 771-793.
Grant F. Scott, “Keats in His Letters,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W.
Norton and Co., 2009) 555-563.
Paul D. Sheats, “Keats and the Ode,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001) 86-101.
Jack Stillinger, “The Hoodwinking of Madeline: Skepticism in The Eve of St Agnes,” in Keats’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) 604-613.
Susan J. Wolfson, “Late Lyric,” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001) 102-119.
Duncan Wu, “Keats and the ‘Cockney School,’” in The Cambridge Companion to Keats, ed. Susan J. Wolfson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 37-52.
* For Czech students: Martin Procházka, Romantismus a osobnost (Prague: Kruh moderních filologů, 1996), chapters 1 (conclusion) and 3 (part “Epické fragmenty”).