Literary History
Courses Online & in London

“What is now proved, was once only imagin’d” declared the visionary poet and artist William Blake in 1790. He was right: the Romantic revolution transformed Western culture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and still shapes the way we think today. On the one hand, violent political change with revolutions in America and in France - “ Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven”, wrote Wordsworth - on the other, a new way of looking at the world, in which imagination overthrew reason and the individual sensibility triumphed over social convention.

This literature course centres on exploring the wild exhilarating landscapes of Byron and Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the prose of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley. We will look at earlier passages from the Renaissance and the philosophy of Longinus. We will question whether ‘the sublime’ is an intense state of mind, a physical force, or a mode of expression by relating these writers to the history of the concept.

Source material for medieval medicine is rich and diverse. In this course we explore extracts from the work of literary greats, such as Langland, Gower,Chaucer and Boccacio, alongside extracts from scientific writings, recipes, legal and constitutional works, religious writing and other historical records, to illuminate ideas about the body, society and health in the middle ages.

Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio set the foundations of Italian literature taking the Tuscan vernacular and turning it into a literary language. Discover how they contributed to the shift from an essentially medieval worldview to Humanism and the Renaissance.

Join us for an exploration of the 14th century Medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Using Simon Armitage’s 2007 translation, we will investigate the poem’s poetic and narrative structure, its verse form, imagery and  symbolism, and will consider aspects of medieval life and culture, including knighthood, romance and courtly and religious values.