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Introduction to English 212, British Literature since 1760
Spring 2006 at California State University, Fullerton

If there is one theme running through this course, it is that romantic and Victorian poets lived through a crisis of authority and examined its political, cultural, and religious consequences. Imagination is the central power advocated by the romantic poets: they make great claims for it as an almost godlike agent of creation, remaking the world anew and uniting the broken shards of self and community. We may find the Victorians more circumspect about such radical claims for imagination and the individual, but the romantics do not necessarily set forth their ideals naively—that is a charge made partly by the Victorians themselves, and partly by twentieth-century critics. An extensive Introduction to C19 British Literature is available in the Guides section of our Wiki Site.