The course will offer a broad overview of the political,
philosophical and literary history of the Romantic period
(1789-1850), focusing on the works of the second generation
of Romantic writers. We will begin with an investigation of the impact of the French Revolution on the Romantics and of radical developments during this period in religion (the opposition to Christianity), philosophy (the revolt against empiricism), aesthetics (the prevailing interest in the sublime and the picturesque) and art (the change from portrait to landscape painting). We will then turn to an in-depth study of the work of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and George Gordon Byron, focusing on their different representations of transcendence, the sublime, transgression and the Promethean hero.