The title of the seminar already evokes the question of whether a ‘Romantic novel’ can exist. Romanticism and the novel are usually treated as contradictory, with the former linked to political radicalism and idealism and the latter linked to realism and the everyday. It is usually poetry that is associated with Romanticism, and at its peak, the literary movement was strongly associated with the male genius poet. This seminar examines the tension between Romantic aesthetics and the conventions of the novel, raising the question of how Romantic ideas about political radicalism, subjectivity, and the sublime interact with the structure of the novel. We will also investigate how Romanticism reshapes the novel form by delving into different manifestations of Romanticism, including Orientalist Romanticism, the Gothic, English and Irish Nationalism, and Victorian Romanticism. To do this, this seminar will focus on Vathek (William Beckford), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), short excerpts of Waverly (Walter Scott), excerpts of The Wild Irish Girl (Sydney Owenson), and excerpts of Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë).
The course will also trace the broader cultural afterlives of Romanticism in contemporary adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
Students should organise their own copies of Beckford’s Vathek and Shelley’s Frankenstein. The excerpts and secondary texts will be provided on Moodle. Students can submit both a shorter (1,500 words) or a longer (3,000 words) essay to attain credit points and/or a grade.
- Kursleiter*in: Dr. Kübra Özermiş