This course will be an introduction to the so-called first generation Romantic writers and will focus mostly on the poetry and criticism of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Some time will also be spent with the eccentric poet and artist William Blake, particularly in regards to his arguably allegorical work The Daughters of Albion. We will examine the social, political, cultural, and philosophical concerns of the beginning of the Romantic movement of literature by exploring these writers’ complicated relationships with Christianity, their questioning of empiricism, and their fascination with the sublime.