Romantic Allegory

Lecturer: Prof. Nick Halmi

The seminar will explore aspects of allegory in British Romantic culture. Allegory was regarded in the period (as in earlier 18th-century criticism) with ambivalence or distaste, and yet it continued to be attractive to writers and artists. This tension manifested itself it in the dissociation of certain kinds of figurative representation from allegory (e.g. personified abstractions in lyric poetry, Coleridge’s concept of the symbol), in explicitly allegorical works (including political cartoons), and in the use of ‘quasi-allegorical’ narratives (simultaneously inviting and frustrating allegorical interpretation, e.g. Coleridge’s ‘supernatural poems’, Keats’s Hyperion, Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound). Readings will include works (or in some cases extracts of works) by Charlotte Smith, Coleridge, Mary Tighe, Keats, Percy Shelley, and the political cartoonist James Gillray.

SEMINAR READING

Required:

1. Charlotte Smith, Sonnet XXI (“Supposed to be written by Werter”, 1784)
2. Coleridge, “Allegoric Vision” (1795)
3. Mary Tighe, preface to Psyche (1805)
4. P. B. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820), preface, acts 1-3
5. James Gillray cartoons: “Hopes of the Party” (1791) and “Opening of the Budget” (1796)

Optional:

1. Tighe, Psyche, canto 6
2. Keats, Hyperion (1820), book 1

The materials can be downloaded here.