CE-COLGM 2068 - Very Heaven: The Romantic Movement Part One Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge

Leader: Joseph Sgammato, Collegium board member, senior adjunct faculty, English and Film, SUNY Westchester Community College “Romantic” may be the most misleading word in the language, at least as it applies to the historical era that turned politics, philosophy, and the arts on their respective ears and paved the way for the world as we know it today. Most commonly used in its softer sense as a descriptor of amour, Romantic with a capital “R” evokes revolution, bloodshed, and ruthless rejection of previous aesthetic comforts. This course will focus on Romanticism in English literature, especially the first generation of poets: the wild and mystical William Blake, the breathtakingly gifted William Wordsworth, and the troubled, drug-addled Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Close readings of the canonical masterpieces of these poets will bring to exciting life Wordsworth’s famous paean to his age: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven!”

Location Valhalla