Fall 2026
TBA
Instructor: Nancy Yousef
Among the most important writers of the Romantic era, William Wordsworth proposed radically innovative ways of understanding the world through writing poetry, reading poetry, and thinking poetically. Centered on close reading of the revolution in poetic language undertaken in Lyrical Ballads and the remarkable autobiographical project undertaken in The Prelude, this seminar provides the opportunity for immersive study of Wordsworth and of preoccupations central to Romanticism, including the ethics of art, the power of imagination, the persistence of memory, and the relationship between self-consciousness and social belonging. Reading of Wordsworth’s poetry will be our focus, but we will also consider important critical work on Wordsworth from the earliest reviews to more recent approaches in literary studies.