Terrible Births: The Novel out of Romanticism

A new world struggled to be born at the turn of the nineteenth century, as Europe was consumed in revolutionary wars, the Industrial Revolution spawned new powers and violence, and the age of Romanticism envisioned a Promethean spirit unbound in poetry. We will be reading the novels that defined this tumultuous age and those that came in its wake. We will read Shelley's "Frankenstein," Brontë's "Wuthering Heights," and books by Walter Scott, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens.