Semester One, 2013:
Week One, Monday 30th September
Writing ‘Romantic’ reform: Percy Shelley, “A Philosophical View of Reform” (1819-20/1920)
--- The Mask of Anarchy (1819)
Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826)
Shelley’s “A Philosophical View on Reform” offers an interesting point of departure for this semester of NCRG, on the topic of “Reform”. In this essay, Shelley indicated that collective social reform would find initiation in the words and ideas of the poets, writers and philosophers of the nation. The deep irony of this being that Shelley’s text was not printed until 1920, far beyond his own lifetime. We will discuss this essay alongside “The Mask of Anarchy”, a political poem written by Shelley to such an end in 1819, yet which was also published posthumously, in 1832.
We will also read Mary Shelley’s little studied The Last Man (1826), which, similar to her husband’s essay, gained very little critical attention until the mid twentieth-century. Rather than conforming to the romantic political ideals of her husband his circle, Shelley’s novel not only lamented their failure, but also questioned their validity and potential as active political possibilities. Apocalyptic and ultimately tragic, the novel interrogates the notion of human centrality, and man’s ability to create and effect a linear and progressive change against an inevitable universe.
Week Two, Monday 28th October
Narratives of Slavery: Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince (1831)
Harriet Martineau, ‘Morals of Slavery’, Society in America (1837)
Written in between the passing of the 1807 Act for the Abolition of Slave Trade, and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, Mary Prince’s autobiographical The History of Mary Prince (1831) explicates and interrogates the personal experience of the abolition. Prince was born into slavery in the late eighteenth-century, and although slavery was abolished during her lifetime, she remained a slave until she was brought to England as a ‘servant’ in 1828. Through an association with Thomas Pringle, abolitionist writer, and with the help of author Susanna Strickland, Prince wrote and published The History of Mary Prince. Prince’s account attracted much attention, as a point of controversy but also of sympathy. Her account was personal and unflinching, overriding the smothering propagandist lies of slavery, replacing them with the truth of human experience and suffering.
Alongside Prince’s account, we will read Harriet Martineau’s essay on the ‘Morals of Slavery’. Martineau was violently opposed to slavery, and an advocate of justice and emancipation for all marginalised and suppressed peoples as a matter of human right, freedom and justice.
Week Three, Monday 25th November
Social Reform: Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (1841)
William Blake, The Divine Comedy (Illustrations) (1825-27)
http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copy.xq?copyid=but812.1&java=no
The title of Gogol’s novel emerges from the desperate plan of its protagonist. In order to purchase lands and make his way in the world, Chichikov must prove that he can tend the lands; he must prove trough a list of names that he has serfs, ‘souls’, to work his land. Chichikov’s plan is to purchase the names of the ‘dead souls’, the deceased serfs of other landowners, from which he might produce a list and procure land. The title itself therefore reflects the desperate social state of Russia in 1812, yet Gogol’s novel presents the reader with a series of moral and societal problems applicable far beyond the background of nineteenth-century Russia.
The first part of the novel was allegedly intended to resemble a modern day Inferno of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Gogol himself referred to this work as a poem in prose. We therefore also would like to accompany discussion of Gogol’s novel with the work of radical romantic poet, philosopher and illustrator William Blake. Blake produced 102 illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, converting poetry into morally and spiritually charged visual art. We would like to consider these two different uses of Dante’s work, and the reforming inclinations behind these applications.
Semester Two, February 2014:
Week One: Monday 24th February
Harriet Martineau, Deerbrook (1838)
Week Two: Monday 24th March
William Carleton’s The Black Prophet, A Tale of the Irish Famine (1845)
With excerpts from Daniel O’Connell’s life writings.
Week Three: Monday 21st April
Elizabeth Gaskell Mary Barton (1848)
Week Four: Monday 26th May
Edgar Allan Poe 'A Predicament' (1838), 'How to Write a Blackwood's Tale' (1838)
With Annette von Droste-Hulshoff's 'Die Judenbuche' ('The Jew's Beech')
For more information and updates, please visit our Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/edinburgh19thcentury/
Week One, Monday 30th September
Writing ‘Romantic’ reform: Percy Shelley, “A Philosophical View of Reform” (1819-20/1920)
--- The Mask of Anarchy (1819)
Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826)
Shelley’s “A Philosophical View on Reform” offers an interesting point of departure for this semester of NCRG, on the topic of “Reform”. In this essay, Shelley indicated that collective social reform would find initiation in the words and ideas of the poets, writers and philosophers of the nation. The deep irony of this being that Shelley’s text was not printed until 1920, far beyond his own lifetime. We will discuss this essay alongside “The Mask of Anarchy”, a political poem written by Shelley to such an end in 1819, yet which was also published posthumously, in 1832.
We will also read Mary Shelley’s little studied The Last Man (1826), which, similar to her husband’s essay, gained very little critical attention until the mid twentieth-century. Rather than conforming to the romantic political ideals of her husband his circle, Shelley’s novel not only lamented their failure, but also questioned their validity and potential as active political possibilities. Apocalyptic and ultimately tragic, the novel interrogates the notion of human centrality, and man’s ability to create and effect a linear and progressive change against an inevitable universe.
Week Two, Monday 28th October
Narratives of Slavery: Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince (1831)
Harriet Martineau, ‘Morals of Slavery’, Society in America (1837)
Written in between the passing of the 1807 Act for the Abolition of Slave Trade, and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, Mary Prince’s autobiographical The History of Mary Prince (1831) explicates and interrogates the personal experience of the abolition. Prince was born into slavery in the late eighteenth-century, and although slavery was abolished during her lifetime, she remained a slave until she was brought to England as a ‘servant’ in 1828. Through an association with Thomas Pringle, abolitionist writer, and with the help of author Susanna Strickland, Prince wrote and published The History of Mary Prince. Prince’s account attracted much attention, as a point of controversy but also of sympathy. Her account was personal and unflinching, overriding the smothering propagandist lies of slavery, replacing them with the truth of human experience and suffering.
Alongside Prince’s account, we will read Harriet Martineau’s essay on the ‘Morals of Slavery’. Martineau was violently opposed to slavery, and an advocate of justice and emancipation for all marginalised and suppressed peoples as a matter of human right, freedom and justice.
Week Three, Monday 25th November
Social Reform: Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (1841)
William Blake, The Divine Comedy (Illustrations) (1825-27)
http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copy.xq?copyid=but812.1&java=no
The title of Gogol’s novel emerges from the desperate plan of its protagonist. In order to purchase lands and make his way in the world, Chichikov must prove that he can tend the lands; he must prove trough a list of names that he has serfs, ‘souls’, to work his land. Chichikov’s plan is to purchase the names of the ‘dead souls’, the deceased serfs of other landowners, from which he might produce a list and procure land. The title itself therefore reflects the desperate social state of Russia in 1812, yet Gogol’s novel presents the reader with a series of moral and societal problems applicable far beyond the background of nineteenth-century Russia.
The first part of the novel was allegedly intended to resemble a modern day Inferno of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Gogol himself referred to this work as a poem in prose. We therefore also would like to accompany discussion of Gogol’s novel with the work of radical romantic poet, philosopher and illustrator William Blake. Blake produced 102 illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, converting poetry into morally and spiritually charged visual art. We would like to consider these two different uses of Dante’s work, and the reforming inclinations behind these applications.
Semester Two, February 2014:
Week One: Monday 24th February
Harriet Martineau, Deerbrook (1838)
Week Two: Monday 24th March
William Carleton’s The Black Prophet, A Tale of the Irish Famine (1845)
With excerpts from Daniel O’Connell’s life writings.
Week Three: Monday 21st April
Elizabeth Gaskell Mary Barton (1848)
Week Four: Monday 26th May
Edgar Allan Poe 'A Predicament' (1838), 'How to Write a Blackwood's Tale' (1838)
With Annette von Droste-Hulshoff's 'Die Judenbuche' ('The Jew's Beech')
For more information and updates, please visit our Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/edinburgh19thcentury/