British Literature: Early - Mid 19th Century

Authors and Works

• William Blake ("Holy Thursday [from Songs of Innocence]," "Holy Thursday [from Songs of Experience]," "Nurse's Song [from Songs of Innocence]," "Nurse's Song [from Songs of Experience]," "On Another's Sorrow," "The Little Vagabond," "London," "Jerusalem" - poetry)
• Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice - novel)
• Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe - novel)
• Thomas Carlyle ("Essay on Scott" - essay)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge ("The Rime of the Ancyent Mariner" - poetry)
• William Wordsworth ("The Tables Turned," "Daffodils" - poetry)
• Lord Byron ("She Walks in Beauty," "So, We'll Go No More a-Roving" - poetry)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley ("Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind" - poetry)
• Mary Shelley (Frankenstein - novel)
• Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre - novel)
• William Makepeace Thackeray ("Rebecca and Rowena" - short story)

Topics

• Tone
• Character
• Romanticism
• Description
• Historical fiction
• Persuasive writing
• Imagery and poetic language
• Setting
• Person
• Humor

Recommendations

This course is especially recommended for the following students:

• Students who have already taken at least one previous high-school level Lightning Literature course
• Students studying world history
• Students interested in British literature

These should not be viewed as restrictions; this course can profitably be used by high-school students of any grade regardless of which previous Lightning Literature courses they have completed. Generally speaking, this course is more difficult than the two American Literature courses and Speech but easier than the Shakespeare courses, British Christian Literature, or British Medieval Literature. Much depends on student interest in the material, however.