the current canon in british romantics studies.pdf

The Current Canon in British Romantics StudiesAuthor(s): Harriet Kramer LinkinSource: College English, Vol. 53, No. 5 (Sep., 1991), pp. 548-570Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/377468 .

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Harriet Kramer Linkin

The Current Canon in British Romantics

Studies

During the fall of 1989, I conducted a survey of universities in the United States asking teachers of Romanticism to identify the writers they include in their Ro- mantics courses; the survey sought to ascertain exactly what we teach as the current canon of British Romantic literature. Given recent scholarship in British Romanticism, it seems fairly clear that the period includes many more significant figures than those we have been acknowledging for some time as "the canonical Big Six-Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats" (Cantor 708). Of course we know that the canon we invoke with a capital "C" is no monolithic structure or commandment carved in stone but a shifting set of ideals that correspond to a culture's Zeitgeist (see Aiken; Altieri; Smith). Roughly thirty-five years ago, as Karl Kroeber reminds us, "Romanticism was five poets, a Scottish novelist nobody read, and the years 1798-1832" (557); Jack Stillinger remembers:

At Harvard in the middle 1950s, Wordsworth was very little taught or read ... Shelley was apparently mentioned only to be ridiculed; and Blake was practically unheard of. .... Coleridge was taught, mainly as a literary critic and philosopher; and Keats of course was studied and written about by nearly everyone. (559)

Like Stillinger and Kroeber, the other eight important critics who participated in Studies in Romanticism's celebratory "How It Was" (see Wagenknecht) helped establish the reputations of the canonical big six whose works formed the center of Romantics studies for the past several decades (John Bayley, G. Wilson Knight, David Perkins, Thomas McFarland, Carl Woodring, Herbert Linden- berger, Michael G. Cooke, and Northrop Frye). Because much of the most inno- vative scholarship in our field now urges a reconsideration of what constitutes British Romanticism (see Curran; McGann; Mellor; Ross, among others), I anticipated the survey would uncover a correlation between our new critical ap- proach to the canon and the way we actually teach and thereby codify Roman- ticism.

While one strong impetus for the survey comes from the world of British Ro- mantic scholarship, an equally strong impetus for the project originates in my more personal desire to see whether my course in Romanticism professes what

Harriet Kramer Linkin is an assistant professor of British nineteenth-century studies at New Mexico State University.

College English, Volume 53, Number 5, September 1991

548



The Current Canon 549

our profession designates as Romanticism. In response to the impact of feminist theory on canon formation, I have changed my course from the models offered by my teachers; instead of that traditional study of six major male British Ro- mantic poets (William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Lord By- ron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats), I also include major female British Roman- tic writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, and Emily Bronte. While feminism impelled my altered view, the larger issue of canon formation has been under serious review since the explosive reve- lations of the sixties. Discussion of the canon continues to set off sparks, as the recent, generously publicized, conservative backlash against curricular reform demonstrates. Former Education Secretary William Bennett's attacks against curricular reform may have induced the formation of the conservative 500-mem- ber National Association of Scholars (see Wilson; Heller; Brodkey), whose first major assembly in 1988 sought to point out the ways "a 'radicalization' of Amer- ican higher education has led to a decline in academic standards" (Mooney Al). Even as this article was copy-edited for the printers, George Will produced a Newsweek column decrying academic efforts to open up the canon. For British nineteenth-century studies, work on literary canons has a particularly rich histo- ry given the once radical, now standard arguments by such critics as Ellen Moers, Elaine Showalter, or Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, whose examination of women writers redefined our conceptions of significant nineteenth- century narratives. Recent studies suggest the next stage of nineteenth-century canon reformation will focus on poetry: each year we see more and more com- mentaries on women poets, revaluing the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Bronte, or Christina Rossetti, and in Romanticism, recognizing the value of poets once relegated to obscurity like Felicia Hemans, Mary Robinson, or Charlotte Smith. Because we have had at least twenty years to absorb or reflect the influence of literary feminism and seem to stand on the threshold of a new Romantics canon that incorporates women poets as well as novelists, I wanted to know how other teachers were approaching Romanticism: through my survey I hoped to locate teachers working with a revised Romantics canon. The actual teaching canon the survey uncovers not only offers valuable information as a way of testing the effect of feminist theory on a specific field of inquiry after twenty years, but it also provides a mark for future measurement. With this deep sounding of how we teach Romanticism in 1990, we can measure change in 2020 (and see how true our vision has been).

I sent out copies of a questionnaire (Appendix 1) to the departmental administrators of 313 universities, selecting them from the 720 universities and 907 colleges listed in the 1989 PMLA Directory of "Four-year Colleges and Univer- sities." Because I wanted to compare graduate and undergraduate courses, I only contacted universities, included all fifty states, and attempted to provide a fair cross-section of public and private institutions, large and small universities, research and teaching institutions, and branch and main campuses. My sample of 313 institutions represented 43.4% of the universities listed. Because I asked administrators to distribute copies of the questionnaire to appropriate department members, I often received more than one response per university; of the



550 College English

239 completed questionnaires, the total number of schools responding was 164 or 52.3%.

The questionnaire was designed to elicit as many responses as possible by making it easy to respond. Section 1 requests basic information identifying the kind of course being taught. Although not all the information solicited proved useful in accounting for the British Romantics canon, I anticipated the following factors to be relevant: the name and number of the course, the duration of the course, the level of student in the course, approximate enrollment, the manner of teaching (lecture or discussion), the length of each class, the number of times the class meets per week, the number of weeks spent on British Romanticism, and the period identified as British Romanticism in years. Section 2 provides a checklist of 44 writers (23 men and 21 women) whose dates overlap with the years most texts identify as the Romantic period, 1789-1832. Survey results cor- roborate text sources. 211 out of 239 said the Romantic period begins in 1789 (mean and median) although the range was 1750 to 1800. 209 out of 239 said the Romantic period ends in 1832 (mean and median) although the range was 1815 to 1914. Section 3 asks respondents to write in the names of any Romantic writers they teach who are excluded from the listing in Section 2.

In addition to providing the information I requested, respondents also offered unsolicited comments which proved quite instructive. Most comments centered on the selection of names in section 2. Although I certainly had an agenda not made explicit on the questionnaire or cover letter, the principle governing my selection of names in section 2 was ease of response. I assumed a greater participation level if respondents simply had to check off names than if they had to write in all the names themselves. I tried to include the names of as many Ro- mantic writers as I could, taking them directly from fairly conventional sources: Margaret Drabble's entry on Romanticism in The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Meyer Abrams' introduction to "The Romantic Period" in The Nor- ton Anthology of English Literature, and David Perkins' English Romantic Writ- ers. I supplemented these sources with Gilbert and Gubar's introduction to the "Literature of the Nineteenth Century" in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women and Stuart Curran's eye-opening article on neglected Romantic poets, "The I Altered," in Romanticism and Feminism. Section 3 attempts to compen- sate for any oversights by asking respondents to write in excluded names. Most did not add names (only 53 of the 239 participants, or 22%, did). When one re-

spondent later informed me he never filled out questionnaires of this kind and was surprised to find himself filling out this one, I viewed his comment as evi- dence for the efficacy of my design strategy. Less engaging was a comment that attributed politically deceptive strategies to my name selection process:

You have 21 women on this list, which suggests what the point of the survey is. It is notable that you include some very obscure women, but do not think to include the likes of Samuel Rogers, or Thomas Love Peacock, or Francis Jeffrey, or Monk Lewis, or Thomas Campbell, or George Crabbe, or James Hogg.

My research assistant was quite offended by this remark, pointing out that the questionnaire did indeed include the likes of several of those writers. As a




Blakean, I was more disturbed by the respondent who announced, "This survey's categories are, as Blake would say, mind-forg'd manacles." Nevertheless I appreciate the point; others similarly expressed concern for crossing and redefining conventional periods: one respondent commented, "Some of the peo- ple on your list I consider 18th century, others Victorian"; another asked, "Charlotte & Emily published about the same time as Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Elizabeth Gaskell's North & South and Dickens' Hard Times. So who's a Romantic?" Some comments indicated a belief that I was presenting my list of writers as an appropriate syllabus for Romanticism: "I'm interested in seeing the results of your survey. Your list of writers is pretty comprehensive and if you've figured out a way to include most of these in your Romanticism courses I'd be interested to know how you manage it." As would I.

In general the various comments on my list of 44 writers fell into three groups. The first group usually offered a defense of or rationale for traditional courses covering the six major British male poets on the basis of time or space constraints, indicating real discomfort with the perceived intent behind the survey. While some lamented the passing of two-semester courses, others recom- mended a corresponding course in Romantic novels to include the currently excluded. The following is a sampling of these comments with the writer selections in brackets:

My class is all poetry except for a couple of class periods spent on essayists. In a 10 week quarter it's hard to cover even the six major poets fairly adequately. [Blake, Byron, Clare, Coleridge, De Quincey, Hazlitt, Keats, C. Lamb, Scott, P. Shelley, W. Wordsworth]

As this course is an intensive examination of the six major Romantic poets (with some prose excerpts as additional material), there is simply no time for the others on your list. [Blake, Byron, Coleridge, De Quincey, Hazlitt, Keats, P. Shelley, W. Wordsworth]

My purpose is to concentrate on the major Romantic poets-Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. In my department the Romantic novel is part of a novel course. When our Romantic offering consisted of a two-course sequence, it was possible to include more background and minor figures. With only one semester now, one is obliged to focus on major writers. [also Hazlitt, De Quincey, D. Wordsworth, C. Lamb]

I hope to have this course [The English Novel to 1832] divided into separate courses on the 18th Century Novel and the Romantic Novel. When it is, I intend to include writers like Edgeworth, Godwin, De Quincey, and Mary Wollstonecraft. [Austen, Lewis, Radcliffe, Scott, M. Shelley]

You might be interested in part of the rationale for the above selections: it's largely a matter of wanting to go over writers & works in detail. It's depth vs. breadth, which of course implies both weaknesses as well as strengths for a course. [Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, W. Wordsworth]

This last respondent enjoys the relative luxury of teaching two fourteen-week semesters on Early and Later Romantic Writers.



552 College English

A second group requires students to read and write about additional Romantic writers outside of class (thereby unhappily marginalizing them); usually those additional writers are women. In one respondent's class, "Each student selects one of the 'period prose' works listed on the back of the syllabus." The enclosed syllabus revealed a discrepancy between those writers the respondent lists on the questionnaire (Beddoes, Blake, Byron, Clare, Coleridge, De Quincey, Hazlitt, Keats, C. Lamb, Landor, Moore, Scott, P. Shelley, Southey, W. Wordsworth) and those identified on the syllabus (Blake, Byron, Clare, Cole- ridge, Keats, Landor, P. Shelley, W. Wordsworth). More interesting, however, are the "period prose" selections, which include the only women writers identified in that class: Austen, Burney, Edgeworth, Mitford, Radcliffe, Shelley, Smith, and Wollstonecraft. The syllabus designates two class sessions to such "period prose." Other respondents comment as follows:

A final paper is supposed to make connections within or outside of the Romantic Period. So it is likely that some students will include some of these writers as sub- jects for their papers. [Austen, Byron, Clare, Coleridge, De Quincey, Keats, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Wollstonecraft, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth]

In the Romantic Poetry course I try to get writers like Hemans and Howitt in, and Mary Shelley (even though it's a poetry course) to at least try to get a credible representation of women. Typically I assign some sort of project as part of the course which requires that the students do some work specifically with women authors and artists of the period. More useful would be a course (which I'm still trying to have approved here) in Romantic prose, where the dilemma of underrepresentation for women authors would simply vanish. I think the representation (or absence) of women in the typical course in British Romanticism is a real problem for many of us, particularly since it is primarily the poetry which gets taught. In both the 18th Century and the Victorian era this matter of representation is more easily ad- dressed, it seems to me. [Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Hemans, Howitt, Keats, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Smith, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth]

Though relatively recent, my academic "raising" was extremely traditional: En- glish Romanticism meant the pantheon of six men. I will be the first to admit that I suffer from text worship, but I can't help it. At the same time, I find myself in complete agreement with the revisions of the Romantic Period that have been carried out by both feminist and historicist scholars. Thus, when I was assigned to teach the Earlier Romantics last winter, I decided to construct a course that would reflect my own jumbled mind. The syllabus consisted of the usual stuff one would tradi- tionally expect from such a course; for their papers, however, students had to deal with a now-neglected woman author from the same generation as Blake, Words- worth, and Coleridge. [Blake, Coleridge, W. Wordsworth]

The list this last respondent handed out to students included the following names: Joanna Baillie, Anna Barbauld, Mary Berry, Mary Brunton, Lady Char- lotte Bury, Maria Edgeworth, Catherine Fanshawe, Anne Grant, Maria Barton Hack, Elizabeth Hamilton, Barbara Hofland, Catherine Hutton, Elizabeth Inch- bald, Mary Leadbetter, Harriet Lee, Sophia Lee, Hannah Moore, Lady Caroline Nairne, Amelia Opie, Mary Pilkington, Jane Porter, Mary Robinson, Regenia Mary Roche, Anna Seward, Mary Butt Sherwood, Mary Tighe, Elizabeth Turn-




er, Priscilla Wakefield, and Helen Maria Williams. Students did not appreciate their research opportunities; in the respondent's words, "Although I think this

concept is wonderful, in actual practice this course flopped. There were only eight students. Two of them-high school teachers-were outraged that I re- fused to give 'regurgitation' exams; another two never finished the course. I ex- pected my students to dig up all sorts of interesting information; they barely tried."

A third group tries to include some less traditional choices and then worries about lack of coverage through the exclusion of canonical writers:

I have real problems with the canon in this course. I really need two semesters, but only have one. As I add women (Wollstonecraft, D. Wordsworth, M. Shelley, and sometimes J. Austen), I have to drop males (usually Byron, maybe Keats). Some students complain bitterly because we don't do all major Romantic writers; others are delighted at the addition of the women. [Austen, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Wollstonecraft, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth]

When I came upon this last remark I felt as if I had been reading my own writing, that familiar feminist phenomenon described by so many readers and writers. In Literary Women Ellen Moers reports Harriet Martineau said, "When I read [Jane Eyre] I was convinced that it was by some friend of my own, who had portions of my childish experience in his or her mind" (65), while Jane Car- lyle thought Bronte's Shirley contained "so many things I have said myself, printed without alteration of a word" (66). Certainly a mirror of my own experience in modifying the canon presented to me as an undergraduate in 1976 and a graduate student in 1980, this respondent's comment is most indicative of the changes we have wrought in the British Romantics canon according to the results of my survey.

Although I was most interested in uncovering the canon of writers we teach when we label a course as the "British Romantic Period," I did not want to pre- clude other courses in which we teach British Romantic writers and thereby establish, expand or contract the canon. Respondents described a variety of courses that include or focus on Romanticism; I placed those courses in five categories (perhaps earning my colleague's accusatory "mind-forg'd manacles"): (1) Romantic Period (a single course clearly identified by titles such as "The Romantic Period," "English Romantic Literature," "Romantic Poetry and Poetics," or "English Literature 1780-1832"); (2) Various Romantics (a group of undifferentiated courses ranging from sophomore surveys to single author doctoral seminars); (3) Survey (a single course covering Romantic, Vic- torian, and Modern literature such as "British Literature, 1780-Present"); (4) Novel (a single course on nineteenth-century fiction such as "English Fiction, 1800-1932"); and (5) Special (a single special topics course such as "Writing/ Righting Revolution," "Art and Literature," or "The Gothic Imagination"). The table below indicates the percentage and number of completed questionnaires for each category (out of 239) and the percentage and number of schools responding (out of 313 potential schools):



554 College English

Table 1: Breakdown of Course Types

Course Type Questionnaires Schools

% # % #

Romantic Period 58.6 140 38.6 121

Various Romantics 7.9 19 5.4 17

Survey 18.8 45 12.4 39

Novel 5.8 14 4.4 14

Special 8.8 21 6.7 21

Totals 99.9 239 67.2 164* *164 equals the total number of schools responding.

Although all five categories provide significant information for discussing the current canon in Romanticism, I use the Romantic Period courses to ascertain that canon because they are carefully defined and offer the best statistical representation.

The standard teaching canon for the Romantic Period centers firmly on the six traditional male Romantic poets for more than 90% of those survey respondents teaching courses designated as the Romantic Period (see Appendix 2 for the complete chart of percentages of writers taught in Romantic Period courses):

Writer % #

Keats 99 (139)

Coleridge 99 (138) W. Wordsworth 96 (135) P. Shelley 96 (134)

Byron 94 (131)

Blake 91 (128)

Roughly half of the courses in the survey expand this basic canon to include Mary Shelley and Dorothy Wordsworth:

Writer % # M. Shelley 56 (78) D. Wordsworth 49 (68)

Two-fifths to a third of the courses further modify the canon by including the following five writers:




Hazlitt 41 (57) C. Lamb 32 (45) De Quincey 31 (43) Austen 29 (41) Wollstonecraft 29 (41)

After Austen and Wollstonecraft, the percentages drop off precipitously, as if only the bravest swimmers will venture out:

Godwin 24 (34) M. Lamb 10 (14) Hemans 4 (5) Scott 21 (29) Landor 8 (11) Paine* 4 (5) Burns 19 (27) T. Moore 8 (11) Crabbe* 3 (4) Burke 16 (22) Lewis 6 (9) Robinson 3 (4) Southey 14 (20) Smith 6 (8) Seward 2 (3) Hunt 14 (19) Carlyle 5 (7) Taylor 2 (3) E. Bronte 13 (18) C. Bronte 4 (6) Williams 2 (3) Clare 11 (16) Edgeworth 4 (6) Campbell* 1 (2) Peacock 11 (16) Barbauld 4 (5) Hays* 1 (2) Radcliffe 11 (15) Beddoes 4 (5) Locke* 1 (2) *write-ins

In addition to the names listed above (taught in at least two courses by different teachers), twenty respondents identified another twenty-seven writers taught in only their courses: Sarah Austin, Joanna Baillie, William Beckford, William Cobbett, William Cowper, Erasmus Darwin, George Ellis, Olaudah Equiano, William Gifford, William Gilpin, Johann Goethe, Thomas Gray, William Hayley, James Hogg, Mary Howitt, Francis Jeffrey, Immanuel Kant, Letitia Landon, Charles Maturin, Hannah Moore, Richard Price, Sydney Smith, John Sterling, Edward Trelawny, Horace Walpole, Thomas Warton, and Arthur Young. With- oqt additional information from respondents, it is difficult to say how significant a place these writers hold in Romantic Period courses.

Factoring in the level of student in the course-exclusively graduate (G), undergraduate (UG), or a mix of the two (UG/G)--demonstrated very little difference. Of the 140 Romantic Period questionnaires, 52.1% or 73 were designed for undergraduate students, 34.3% or 48 were designed for a mix of undergraduate and graduate students, and 11.4% or 16 were designed for graduate students alone (the remaining 2.1% or 3 failed to identify a student population). Given the small sampling of graduate courses, I am reluctant to attach significance to the resulting figures except to observe how few of the universities participating in the survey offer exclusively graduate-level courses in the Romantic period (see



556 College English

Appendix 3 for a breakdown of the effect of student levels on teachers' writer selections). Factoring in course duration in weeks also demonstrated little difference. Of the 140 completed questionnaires for the Romantic Period category, 82% or 115 teach semester-length courses (defined as 12 to 18 weeks), 16.4% or 23 teach quarter-length courses (defined as 11 weeks or fewer), and 1.6% or 2 failed to identify the duration of their courses. A comparison of the writer percentages reveals that those teaching semester-long courses manage to include more writers than those teaching quarters (see Appendix 4 for a breakdown of the effect of course length on teachers' writer selections). The one potentially significant difference concerns the higher percentages accorded prose writers like M. Shelley, Austen, Wollstonecraft, and Radcliffe in the semester-length courses; it seems probable that semester-length courses can afford to include more novels.

If the survey ascertains the current canon in British Romantics classes, it con- tains few surprises. Surely we expect and require the canonical Big Six to hold so prominent a position in our Romantic Period courses; Romanticism is, after all, a strange beast: not quite nineteenth century, not quite eighteenth century, it almost masquerades as a period course while voicing the thematic concerns of those six writers for most of us. The firmer inclusion of M. Shelley, D. Words- worth, Austen, and Wollstonecraft suggests one important shift in our codifica- tion of Romanticism, but these are largely safe choices (as I argue in "Women and Romanticism: Reformulating Canons in the Classroom"): M. Shelley, D. Wordsworth, and Wollstonecraft always suffer the potential ignominy of being treated as poor relations. In conjunction with the firmer inclusion of these four women writers, the most intriguing results for me (unsurprisingly) were derived from examining gender as a factor in the Romantics classroom. The table below illustrates very plainly the gender distribution pattern among the forty-three writers covered in at least two of the 140 Romantic Period courses (Appendix 2):

Table 2: Gender Distribution Pattern for Writers

Percentage Male Female Total

1-5 6 9 15

6-10 3 2 5

11-25 8 2 10

30-40 3 2 5

50 0 2 2

90-100 6 0 6

Totals: 26 17 43

Whereas the distribution pattern for male Romantic writers occurs across a fair-

ly wide spectrum, more than half of the female Romantic writers are taught in 5% or fewer courses and two thirds of the female Romantic writers are taught in 10% or fewer courses.




What could be identified as the radical fringe who account for 10% or less of the additions to the canon (except that they constitute more than a third of the survey, 38.5% or 54 of the 140 Romantic Period questionnaires) demonstrates an interesting gender bias; they often differentiate themselves on the basis of gender in adding lesser known or minor Romantic writers to the standard teaching canon: all three courses that include Seward only add other female Romantics such as Hemans, or Smith, or Taylor, Robinson, Barbauld, and Smith. Of the three courses that include Taylor, two only add female Romantics such as Hemans and Smith, or the already mentioned Seward, Robinson, Barbauld, and Smith. Two of the three courses that include Williams also only add female Ro- mantics such as Hemans and Edgeworth, or Barbauld and Smith. At the same time several courses only add male Romantics such as Locke and Carlyle, or Beddoes and T. Moore. For the 54 courses that account for writers included in 10% or fewer courses, 22 add only female writers, 18 add only male writers, and 14 add male and female writers. Table 3 breaks down gender choices in terms of the number of minor figures included in Romantic Period courses:

Table 3: Gender Distribution in 10% or Less Courses

# of Writers Male Female Both Total

1 figure 15 13 0 28

2 figures 3 5 7 15

3 figures 0 3 2 5

4 figures 0 0 2 2

5 or more 0 1 3 4

Totals: 18 22 14 54

While these numbers may be disheartening to those in the vanguard of the profession, they point toward a real and significant change in Romantics classes: the 50% who include M. Shelley and D. Wordsworth, the 30% who include Austen and Wollstonecraft, and the 13% or less who include E. Bronte, Radcliffe, M. Lamb, Smith, Barbauld, C. Bronte, Edgeworth, Hemans, Robinson, Seward, Taylor, Williams, and Hays all reflect the slow infiltration of women writers into our standard teaching canon.

If such a movement exists, and the British Romantics canon is indeed ex- panding to include women writers, we might look to the reading lists of more in- novative survey respondents for models of the new canon(s). In order to locate such models, I indexed Romantic Period courses that include Charlotte Smith or Felicia Hemans, basing my selection of these two poets on the nomination of no less a Romantic than William Wordsworth. As Irene Taylor and Gina Luria establish in their classic essay "Gender and Genre: Women in Romantic Liter- ature," Wordsworth himself places Smith and Hemans in rather serious com- pany:



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[O]n Christmas Eve 1802 Wordsworth, reading sonnets, chose a telling list of authors-Milton, himself, and Charlotte Smith. And in 1835 he saw fit to group Fel- icia Hemans with Scott, Coleridge, Lamb, and Crabbe as recently dead authors to be mourned, writing: "Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,/Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;/For her who, ere her summer faded,/Has sunk into a breathless sleep." (105-06)

If Wordsworth could read and mourn these two women poets, surely we can

too; among the 140 Romantic Period survey respondents, six include Smith in their courses, three include Hemans, and two include both Smith and Hemans. A listing of the writers included in these eleven courses follows (see Appendix 5 for a cross listing):

English Romantics (UG/G, 16 weeks) Austen, Barbauld, Blake, Burke, Byron, Coleridge, Crabbe, Godwin, Hazlitt, Keats, Paine, Radcliffe, Robinson, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Smith, Williams, Wollstonecraft, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth

Romantic Period (UG, 15 weeks) Austen, Austin, Barbauld, Beddoes, Blake, Burke, Burns, Byron, Campbell, Car- lyle, Clare, Coleridge, De Quincey, Godwin, Hazlitt, Hemans, Hunt, Keats, C. Lamb, M. Lamb, Landon, Moore, Peacock, Scott, P. Shelley, Southey, Sterling, Taylor, Wollstonecraft, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth

Romantics Seminar (G, 12 weeks) Austen, Barbauld, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, De Quincey, Godwin, Hayley, Hazlitt, Hunt, Keats, Robinson, Scott, Seward, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Smith, Southey, Taylor, Wollstonecraft, W. Wordsworth

British Romantics (G, 14 weeks) Austen, Blake, Burke, Coleridge, Gilpin, Godwin, Hays, H. Moore, Paine, Scott, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Smith, Wollstonecraft, W. Wordsworth, A. Young

Romantic Poetry (UG/G, 15 weeks) Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Hemans, Howitt, Keats, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Smith, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth

Earlier/Later Romantic Writers (UG, 20 weeks) Austen, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Edgeworth, Hemans, Keats, Peacock, Radcliffe, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Williams, Wollstonecraft, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth

The Romantic Period (UG, 14 weeks) Austen, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Hemans, Keats, P. Shelley, Smith, Taylor, W. Wordsworth

The Romantic Sublime (UG, 15 weeks) Burke, Byron, Coleridge, Hemans, Keats, C. Lamb, Scott, Seward, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Wollstonecraft, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth

Earlier/Later Romantic Poets (UG/G, 20 weeks) Austen, Barbauld, Blake, Burke, Burns, Byron, Clare, Coleridge, De Quincey,




Ellis, Gifford, Godwin, Hazlitt, Hunt, Jeffrey, Keats, C. Lamb, Radcliffe, Scott, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Smith, Walpole, Williams, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth

British Romanticism (UG/G, 30 weeks) Austen, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Darwin, De Quincey, Godwin, Hazlitt, Keats, C. Lamb, Seward, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Smith, Wollstonecraft, D. Wordsworth, W. Wordsworth

English Romanticism (UG, 15 weeks) Austen, Blake, Burke, Burns, Coleridge, De Quincey, Hazlitt, Keats, C. Lamb, M. Lamb, M. Shelley, Smith, D. Wordsworth

The evident diversity of these eleven courses suggests we teach heterogeneous visions of Romanticism. Moving beyond my strict, self-imposed category "Ro- mantic Period" (140 respondents) into the less rigorously defined or representa- tive categories "Various Romantics" (19 respondents) and "Special" (21 respondents) makes visible even more versions of Romanticism that not only include writers such as Baillie, Darley, Jewsbury, Landon and Mitford ("Vari- ous Romantics") but also set out implicitly varying canons through the organiz- ing rubrics of "Special" topics and readings:

Romanticism and Feminism (G, 15 weeks) Austen, Baillie, Barbauld, Coleridge, Edgeworth, Hemans, Hays, Inchbald, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, Smith, Taylor, Williams, Wollstonecraft, W. Wordsworth

Gothic Literature (UG, 15 weeks) Barbauld, Blair, C. Bronte, E. Bronte, Byron, Coleridge, Collins, Gray, Keats, Lewis, Polidori, Radcliffe, M. Shelley

The Gothic Imagination (G, 10 Weeks) Blake, C. Bronte, E. Bronte, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Radcliffe, M. Shelley, P. Shelley, W. Wordsworth

English Romanticism French Revolution (G, 10 weeks) Blake, Burke, Coleridge, Godwin, Paine, Sade, Wollstonecraft, W. Wordsworth, historical and theoretical selections

Writing/Righting Revolution (UG, 9 weeks) Austen, Burke, Byron,. Coleridge, De Quincey, Godwin, Hazlitt, Keats, C. Lamb, Paine, Scott, M. Shelley, Williams, Wollstonecraft, W. Wordsworth

Rethinking the French Revolution and English Feminism (G, 10 weeks) Burke, Godwin, Inchbald, Hays, M. A. Radcliffe, M. Shelley, Wollstonecraft, D. Wordsworth, Yearsley

Despite the optimism of my project and essay title, ultimately I cannot identify the current canon in British Romantics studies; there are (as we already always knew) many canons-perhaps conflicting, perhaps contrasting, perhaps compet- ing, perhaps co-existing-but I can point to the significant emergence of a feminist perspective on British Romanticism in the classroom that mirrors its force in



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critical scholarship. A rough quorum vote based on the 140 Romantic Period courses indicates the canon in British Romanticism now includes seven writers rather than the former standard six major male Romantic poets of the past thirty- five years: in addition to Blake, W. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, P. Shelley, and Keats, we teach M. Shelley (and her formal canonization may well be marked by the recent MLA Approaches to Teaching Shelley's "Frankenstein" edited by Behrendt). Given the near majority for D. Wordsworth (49%), our next quorum could easily mandate her inclusion as the eighth Romantic writer in a changing British Romantics canon.

As I assert in the beginning of my essay, the canons we construct reflect the spirit of our times; marked by feminism, new historicism, and the lingering ef- fects of deconstruction, the late 1980s and early 1990s continue to reflect our cultural fascination with multiplicity. In my own classroom, I try to establish a dialogue between male and female voices articulating what I believe are separate versions of Romanticism; conflating the writings of men who seek visionary transcendence with the writings of women who foreground quotidian realities, we come to see how these gendered perspectives define, critique, confine, and complement one another. When we read Blake's liberationist philosophy in tan- dem with Wollstonecraft's, explore D. Wordsworth's struggles with language against W. Wordsworth's and Coleridge's, view Austen's understanding of romantic love in conjunction with Byron and Keats, or examine M. Shelley's com- plex response to high romanticism after P. Shelley and Byron, we gain a much richer comprehension of the varieties of Romanticism than a reading of only the six major male poets allows. We also create what I now perceive as a dangerous, false distinction involving gender and genre: the canon in my course inadvertent- ly invites students to recognize male Romanticism as seeking after the transcen- dent in poetry and female Romanticism as locating the real in prose. With the es- sential rediscovery of important, gifted, and successful female Romantic poets such as Hemans, Robinson, and Smith (among others), we can continue to expand-and understand-the complete canon of British Romanticism in its gener- ic and gendered variation.*

*I acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of Jennifer Holberg, currently a graduate student at the University of Washington, and my husband, Larry Linkin, whose expertise with computers proved invaluable.

Works Cited

Abrams, M. H. "Introduction to The Romantic Period (1798-1832)." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 5th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1986. 1-19.

Aiken, Susan Hardy. "Women and the Question of Canonicity." College En- glish 48 (1986): 288-301.

Altieri, Charles. "An Idea and Ideal of a Literary Canon." Critical Inquiry 10 (1983): 37-60.

Behrendt, Stephen, ed. Approaches to Teaching Shelley's "Frankenstein." New York: MLA, 1990.




Brodkey, Linda. "Opinion: Transvaluing Difference." College English 51 (1989): 597-601.

Cantor, Paul. "Stoning the Romance: The Ideological Critique of Nineteenth- Century Literature." South Atlantic Quarterly 88 (1989): 705-20.

Curran, Stuart. "Romantic Poetry: The I Altered." Mellor 185-207.

Drabble, Margaret, ed. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. "Literature of the Nineteenth Century." The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English. New York: Norton, 1985. 161-86.

1. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-

Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.

Heller, Scott. "Scholars Defend Their Efforts to Promote Literature by Women and Blacks, Decry Attack by Bennett." The Chronicle of Higher Educa- tion 17 Feb. 1988: Al, A16.

Kroeber, Karl. "How It Was." Wagenknecht 554-71.

Linkin, Harriet Kramer. "Women and Romanticism: Reformulating Canons in the Classroom." The CEA Critic 52 (1990): 45-52.

McGann, Jerome J. The Romantic Ideology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.

Mellor, Anne K., ed. Romanticism and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.

Moers, Ellen. Literary Women. 1976. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.

Mooney, Carolyn J. "Conservative Scholars Call for a Movement to 'Reclaim' the Academy." The Chronicle of Higher Education 23 Nov. 1988: Al, All.

Perkins, David, ed. English Romantic Writers. New York: Harcourt, 1967.

Ross, Marlon B. The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.

-. "Romantic Quest and Conquest: Troping Masculine Power in the Crisis of Poetic Identity." Mellor 26-51.

Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977.

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. "Contingencies of Value." Canons. Ed. Robert Von Hallberg. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983. 5-39.

Stillinger, Jack. "How It Was." Wagenknecht 554-71.

Taylor, Irene, and Gina Luria. "Gender and Genre: Women in British Romantic Literature." What Manner of Woman: Essays on English and American Life and Literature. Ed. Marlene Springer. New York: New York UP, 1977. 98-123.



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Wagenknecht, David. "How It Was." Studies in Romanticism 21 (1982): 554-71.

Will, George. "Literary Politics." Newsweek 22 Apr. 1991: 72.

Wilson, Robin. "'Trendy Lightweights' Replace Classics with Nonsense." Chronicle of Higher Education 10 Feb. 1988: A19, A27.

APPENDIX 1:

QUESTIONNAIRE

BRITISH ROMANTICISM SURVEY

Please respond to the following questionnaire by (1) identifying the courses in which you teach British Romantic Writers, (2) indicating which of the listed writers you teach in those courses, and (3) writing in the names of any writers not included on this questionnaire.

Section 1

Name and number of course:

Duration of course (in weeks):

Level of course (freshmen/doctoral):

Approximate enrollment:

Manner of teaching (lecture/discussion):

Length of each class:

Number of times class meets each week:

Time spent on British Romantics (in weeks):

Period defined as British Romanticism (in years):

Section 2

In indicating which of the following writers you include in the course listed above, please use the number of class periods you spend on this writer to mark your choices (or simply check the included writers, if that is easier).

Jane Austen

Joanna Baillie

Anna Barbauld

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

William Blake

Charlotte Bronte




Emily Bronte

Edmund Burke

Robert Burns

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Thomas Carlyle

John Clare

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

George Darley

Thomas De Quincey

Maria Edgeworth

William Godwin

William Hazlitt

Felicia Hemans

Leigh Hunt

Maria Jewsbury

John Keats

Charles Lamb

Mary Lamb

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Walter Savage Landor

Matthew Gregory Lewis

Mary Russell Mitford

Thomas Moore

Thomas Love Peacock

Ann Radcliffe

Mary Robinson

Sir Walter Scott

Anna Seward

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley



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Charlotte Smith

Robert Southey

Jane Taylor

Mary Tighe

Helen Maria Williams

Mary Wollstonecraft

Dorothy Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

Section 3

Please list the names of any British Romantic writers you include in your course that are omitted above.

Please indicate whether you would like a copy of the survey results

when they are available. Thank you very much!

APPENDIX 2

ROMANTIC PERIOD WRITER PERCENTAGES

Writer % # (140)

Keats 99 139

Coleridge 99 138

W. Wordsworth 96 135

P. Shelley 96 134

Byron 94 131

Blake 91 128

M. Shelley 56 78

D. Wordsworth 49 68

Hazlitt 41 57

C. Lamb 32 45




De Quincey 31 43

Austen 29 41

Wollstonecraft 29 41

Godwin 24 34

Scott 21 29 Burns 19 27

Burke 16 22

Southey 14 20

Hunt 14 19 E. Bronte 13 18 Clare 11 16

Peacock 11 16

Radcliffe 11 15 M. Lamb 10 14

Landor 8 11

T. Moore 8 11

Lewis 6 9

Smith 6 8

Carlyle 5 7

C. Bronte 4 6

Edgeworth 4 6 Barbauld 4 5

Beddoes 4 5

Hemans 4 5

Paine 4 5 Crabbe 3 4 Robinson 3 4 Seward 2 3

Taylor 2 3 Williams 2 3

Campbell 1 2

Hays 1 2 Locke 1 2



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APPENDIX 3


STUDENT LEVEL BREAKDOWN

Writer UG (73) UG/G (48) G (16)

% # % # % #

Keats 100 73 100 48 94 15

Coleridge 100 73 98 47 94 15

W. Wordsworth 96 70 95 46 100 16

P. Shelley 96 70 98 47 88 14

Byron 95 69 98 47 75 12

Blake 93 68 90 43 88 14

M. Shelley 55 40 58 28 56 9

D. Wordsworth 58 42 38 18 44 7

Hazlitt 47 34 33 16 38 6

C. Lamb 40 29 23 11 31 5

De Quincey 34 25 23 11 44 7

Austen 30 22 31 15 25 4

Wollstonecraft 32 23 25 12 31 5

Godwin 22 16 25 12 38 6

Scott 22 16 15 7 38 6

Burns 21 15 19 9 19 3

Burke 15 11 15 7 25 4

Southey 14 10 10 5 31 5

Hunt 15 11 8 4 25 4

E. Bronte 15 11 13 6 6 1

Clare 15 11 2 1 19 3

Peacock 15 11 6 3 13 2

Radcliffe 12 9 10 5 6 1

M. Lamb 16 12 2 1 6 1

Landor 7 5 6 3 19 3

Moore 8 6 4 2 19 3

Lewis 7 5 4 2 13 2

Smith 3 2 8 4 13 2

Carlyle 7 5 4 2 0 0




C. Bronte 5 4 4 2 0 0

Edgeworth 8 6 0 0 0 0

Barbauld 3 2 4 2 6 1 Beddoes 5 4 0 0 6 1

Hemans 5 4 2 1 0 0

Paine 1 1 2 1 19 3

Crabbe 3 2 4 2 0 0

Robinson 3 2 2 1 6 1

Seward 1 1 2 1 6 1

Taylor 3 2 0 0 6 1

Williams 1 1 4 2 0 0

Campbell 3 2 0 0 0 0

Hays 0 0 2 1 6 1

Locke 1 1 2 1 0 0

APPENDIX 4:


COURSE LENGTH BREAKDOWN

Writer Quarter (24) Semester (116)

% # % #

Keats 100 24 99 115

Coleridge 100 24 98 114 W. Wordsworth 92 22 97 113 P. Shelley 100 24 95 110

Byron 87 21 95 110

Blake 87 21 92 107

M. Shelley 33 8 60 70

D. Wordsworth 46 11 50 58

Hazlitt 46 11 40 46

C. Lamb 33 8 32 37

De Quincey 37 9 29 34

Austen 12 3 33 38

Wollstonecraft 17 4 32 37



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Godwin 21 5 25 29

Scott 25 6 20 23

Burns 21 5 19 22

Burke 17 4 15 18

Southey 12 3 15 17

Hunt 17 4 13 15

E. Bronte 8 2 14 16

Clare 12 3 11 13

Peacock 12 3 11 13

Radcliffe 4 1 12 14

M. Lamb 4 1 11 13

Landor 4 1 9 10

T. Moore 0 0 9 11

Lewis 4 1 7 8

Smith 4 1 6 7

Carlyle 0 0 6 7

C. Bronte 8 2 3 4

Edgeworth 4 1 4 5

Barbauld 4 1 3 4

Beddoes 0 0 4 5

Hemans 0 0 4 5

Paine 4 1 3 4

Crabbe 0 0 3 4

Robinson 0 0 3 4

Seward 0 0 2 3

Taylor 0 0 2 3

Williams 4 1 2 2

Campbell 0 0 2 2

Hays 0 0 2 2

Locke 0 0 2 2




APPENDIX 5:

ROMANTIC PERIOD SAMPLE COURSES CROSS LISTING

Writer 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Total

Austen XXXX XX XXX 9

Austin X 1

Barbauld X X X X 4

Beddoes X 1

Blake XXXXXXX XXX 10

Burke XX X XX X 6

Burns X X X 3

Byron XXX XXXXXX 9

Campbell X 1

Carlyle X 1

Clare X X 2

Coleridge XXXXXXXXXXX 11

Crabbe X 1

Darwin X 1

De Quincey X X X X X 5

Edgeworth X 1

Ellis X 1

Gifford X 1

Gilpin X 1

Godwin XXXX XX 6

Hayley X 1

Hays X 1 Hazlitt XXX XXX 6

Hemans X XXXX 5

Howitt X 1

Hunt XX X 3

Jeffrey X 1 Keats XXX XXXX XXX 10

C. Lamb X X X X X 5 M. Lamb X X 2

Landon X 1



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H. Moore X 1 T. Moore X 1

Paine X X 2

Peacock X X 2

Radcliffe X X X 3

Robinson X X 2

Scott XXX XX 5

Seward X X X 3

M. Shelley X X X X X X X X X 9

P. Shelley XXXXXXXXXX 10

Smith X XXX X XXX 8

Southey XX 2

Sterling X 1

Taylor X X X 3

Walpole X 1 Williams X X X 3

Wollstonecraft X X X X X X X 7

D. Wordsworth X X X X X X X X 8

W. Wordsworth XXXXXXXXXX 10

A. Young X 1



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