English Literary Landscapes, 1700-1900

In this course we will examine literary and related works that take as their focus the natural world and man's relationship to it. We will consider transformations of taste in representations of landscape in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. Works to be discussed will include poems, gardening tracts, philosophical treatises, notebooks, letters, travel accounts, natural histories, and novels. Pope, Crabbe, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Clare, Hopkins, and Hardy will be central figures in this course.