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Next semester\nI will be teaching again English Romantic Literature after a long lapse, spent\nteaching mainly Victorian Literature. I last taught Romanticism in the academic\nyear 2004-5, which is really a long time ago\u2013even though the 21st<\/sup> century\nproduces this strange effect of making all yearly dates beginning with 20 seem\njust yesterday. Although to the layperson it might seem that the literary\nperiods of the past stay static, the fact is that they are in constant turmoil\nbecause of expanding research. What Romanticism was back in 1988, when Prof.\nGuillermina Cenoz so beautifully taught it to my second-year undergrad class,\nis not the same Romanticism I taught in 2004. 14 years later, in 2018,\nRomanticism is, once more, quite a different construction. Or is it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The way to gauge the changes in how a particular literary period is apprehended is to read the introductions aimed at students. In my undergrad years I learned Romanticism from the Norton Anthology of English Literature<\/em> (volume 2) and the truly splendid New Pelican Guide to English Literature<\/em>, edited by Boris Ford. The nine volumes are still in my office and I marvel at how dense they are\u2013Ford and his collaborators assumed that undergrads were sophisticated readers, willing and happy to study what amounts to an extraordinarily long text. The last volume, if I am correct, was published in 1995 and put an end to a classic style of presenting information to students, before the emergence of theory seeped down to more basic levels and before identity politics wreaked havoc on the canon (or tried to). I\u2019m not being nostalgic but just making a note of how academic fashions come and go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We have been using as background reading for our second-year \u2018Victorian Literature\u2019 course Maureen Moran\u2019s guide, simply called Victorian Literature and Culture<\/em> (Continuum, 2007). When I write \u2018using\u2019 I mean that students are expected to read it in the first month and then pass a quiz. I must confess that my colleagues and I had great fun preparing the multiple choice questions, particularly the nonsensical option that should be discarded first (but that each year a handful of students do choose\u2026). I have read, then, Sharon Ruston\u2019s introduction in the same series, called Romanticism<\/em>, to consider whether we could use it in a similar way. I have enjoyed it very much but there are a number of issues that worry me and that I would like to address here. One is the very construction of the books called introductions and the other is the resilience of the canon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have already\nwritten here two posts about the sub-genre of the introduction. One in 2011, on\nBritish theatre (http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2011\/03\/09\/like-a-crowded-party-reading-introductions-to-british-theatre\/<\/a>);\nthe other just last year, 2017, about Scottish Literature (http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2017\/07\/03\/trying-to-catch-up-a-book-on-recent-scottish-literature\/<\/a>).\nI may be repeating, then, some of the arguments, though this topic always takes\na slightly different angle depending on the material. Thus, last September 27,\nI attended the presentation of the volume edited by Teresa L\u00f3pez-Pellisa, Historia de la ciencia ficci\u00f3n en la cultura\nespa\u00f1ola<\/em> at Llibreria Gigamesh and you can see that the presenter, Prof. Miquel\nBarcel\u00f3, spent a good deal of his talk wondering how such a dense volume should\nbe read (https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XzgkedREkjg<\/a>).\nI myself intervened to question whether a book is the ideal vehicle for an\nintroduction, guide, or history but seeing Teresa\u2019s concerned face (her\npublisher was in the room\u2026) I quickly changed subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Historia\u2026 <\/em>is very different from Ruston\u2019s Romanticism<\/em> yet they present similar\nproblems because these are books that need to be studied, not just read. Miquel\nBarcel\u00f3 referred to Teresa\u2019s excellent volume as a \u2018reference book\u2019 but this is\nnot really what it is. His own Ciencia\nficci\u00f3n: Nueva gu\u00eda de lectura<\/em> (the 2015 new edition based on his 1990\nclassic) is, for me, a reference book: you can read it from end to end or just\ndip into it for specific information. Of course, this is what he meant in\nrelation to the 14 chapters in Historia\u2026<\/em>\nbut even if you take each chapter separately, you still need paper and pen to\nmake notes or, as I did, keep your tablet close by to check whatever you need\nto check. And here\u2019s a problem (also with Ruston\u2019s Romanticism<\/em>): when I read books that survey a literary field, I\nneed to see pictures as a memory aid\u2013of authors, book covers, places, arts, you\nname it\u2026 Whether this is a thick 500+ page book (like Historia<\/em>\u2026.) or a slim 150-page volume like Ruston\u2019s, a survey which\noffers no illustrations is beginning to be problematic for me as a reader of\nthe internet age. Imagine what the digital natives seating in our classrooms\nmust think of so much print\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll leave\nthe ambitious Historia de la ciencia\nficci\u00f3n en la cultura espa\u00f1ola<\/em> aside to focus on the introductions to\nliterary periods for undergrads to claim that they should be offered, ideally, as\nhypertextual online resources most attractive to navigate. Now, the problem\nwith the available resources (at least the ones I know of) is that either they\nare too basic, or too sprawling. Also, excuse me, antiquated. Look, for\ninstance, at the very well-known Victorian Web. If you read the credits page,\nyou will see that, basically the website\u2019s configuration dates back to the mid\n1990s. It has been growing magnificently in number of documents and now it\noffers versions in Spanish and French. But, although it is listed as one of the\nresources we recommend to our students, I\u2019m very sorry to say that it is not\nreally useful to them\u2013it can even have the negative effect of overwhelming\nthem. It is not my intention to criticize in any way what is, I insist, a\nwonder of the academic world but to question the inexistence of truly adequate,\nbasic level introductions to literary periods and schools that can be safely\nrecommended to undergrads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s see\nif I can explain myself better. Take Ruston\u2019s book, with its four sections: 1.\nHistorical, Cultural and Intellectual Context, 2. Literature in the Romantic\nPeriod, 3. Critical Approaches, and 4. Resources for Independent Study\n(including a chronology, a glossary of key concepts, and a bibliography). This\nis about 125 pages of text (parts 1, 2 and 3) and about 30 for part 4\u2013a\nreasonably brief text, of a size that would adapt very well to the website format.\nThe moment I started reading, I could see where the links to other online\nresources could be placed and where the pictures should be inserted; their\nabsence grew louder as I read on and what appeared to be basic information started\nthickening into a lovely but very thick broth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Half-way\ninto the book, I understood what the problem is: Ruston has a marvellous\nunderstanding of the Romantic period and an impressive ability to offer a\nsynthesis but she thinks as an expert academic and not as an undergrad student.\nHer introduction made perfect sense to me\u2013as does Moran\u2019s to the Victorian Age\u2013because\nI already know what she is writing about and can, thus, enjoy the new twists\nand turns she has introduced in the canonical story I was handed down back in\n1988. But I\u2019m sure that our second year students approaching the Victorian age\nor Romanticism anew must be mostly baffled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ruston\u2019s\nvolume there is, also, a perceptible tension between what is relevant and\nirrelevant, which is part of all<\/em>\nintroductions. Thus, no matter how amazing the Lunar Society (a Midlands\nscientific league of the most advanced minds of the time) seems to the author,\nI doubt that our students find the 3.5 pages about it relevant to the study of\nWordsworth and company. This tension is, of course, most palpable in Ruston\u2019s\nattempt to undo the vision of Romanticism as a period dominated by the poetry\nwritten by the six male geniuses (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley\nand Keats). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our\nsyllabus, as you may imagine, is focused on their poems (30% of the course) with\nthe other two thirds devoted to celebrating women\u2019s fiction, with Mary Shelley\u2019s\nFrankenstein<\/em> (1818) and Jane Austen\u2019s\nPride and Prejudice<\/em> (1813). Reading\nRuston, however, I felt positively guilty that we strike such a poor gender\nbalance in the poetry segment; then, at the same time I wondered whether I\nreally want to teach Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Charlotte Smith or Joanna Baillie\ninstead of any of the six men. We might correct this by including in our\nbooklet more poems by women but classroom time is awfully limited as it is. I\nrealize that for others the real sin lies in not teaching Walter Scott\u2019s novels\nbut, again, if we had one year instead of one semester, we might include one of\nhis books. As things are now, neither Mary Shelley nor Jane Austen are\nreplaceable (at least to me).<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem,\nthen, is that if we really follow the picture that Ruston draws of the Romantic\nperiod and we radically alter the syllabus we run the risk of giving our\nstudents an impression that would not agree with the standard view. I do\nrealize that we are changing the syllabus all the time: Frankenstein<\/em> would have seemed an odd choice for the 1988 course I\ntook. At the same time, I doubt very much that students will criticize us for\nnot telling them about Hannah Moore\u2013and the other way round: the experiment\nlast year consisted of including the anti-slavery autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of\nOlaudah Equiano<\/em> (1789) to emphasize that the Romantic period was a time of\nabolitionist agitation. From what I\u2019m told, students failed to be enthusiastic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an ideal\nsituation, I would have the 70 students in my Romanticism class produce their\nown study materials, not in e-book form (as I have done in other courses) but\nas a small, limited, accessible website. This, I know, is pure madness for it\nrequires an investment of time and digital know-how that I simply lack\u2013and also\nbecause, guess what?, the result would not count as a Ministry-approved merit\nfor my CV. A friend told me recently that publishing an introduction in book\nform has many advantages because this is a kind of text often quoted. I must\nstress, however, that the Spanish Ministry of Education, or, rather, the ANECA\nagency, does not rate introductions as valid research. Two friends, each the author\nof a valued introduction to their fields, have confirmed this point after failing\ntheir personal assessment exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We, then, simply need to make do with what we can purchase or check online\u2013which is, besides, produced in the anglophone world with no consideration of whether it is adaptable to other cultures. And hope that this will do for our students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\npublish a new post every Tuesday (for updates follow @SaraMartinUAB). Comments\nare very welcome! Download the yearly volumes from: http:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116328<\/a>.\nMy web: http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Next semester I will be teaching again English Romantic Literature after a long lapse, spent teaching mainly Victorian Literature. I last taught Romanticism in the academic year 2004-5, which is really a long time ago\u2013even though the 21st century produces this strange effect of making all yearly dates beginning with 20 seem just yesterday. Although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[258,413,507],"class_list":["post-1503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-introductions","tag-romanticism","tag-victorian-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}