Romantic Poetry
British Romantic poetry and fiction from MIT OpenCourseWare, covering Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats alongside prose writers Mary Shelley and Walter Scott. The syllabus moves chronologically through the movement, pairing close readings of poems like Wordsworth's Prelude and Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner with excerpts from Frankenstein and Scott's historical fiction. Sessions place each writer against the political upheavals of the period, including the French Revolution and industrialization, and examine how Romantic ideas about imagination, nature, and the individual took shape in response. Materials include a full reading list, lecture notes, and writing assignments asking students to analyze form and historical context together. No video lectures are included, but the course provides the complete syllabus and assignments MIT undergraduates use, free to access with no certificate offered.