Unit ENGLISH LITERATURE
- Course
- Philosophy and psychological science and techniques
- Study-unit Code
- 40A00038
- Curriculum
- In all curricula
- Teacher
- Annalisa Volpone
- Teachers
-
- Annalisa Volpone
- Hours
- 54 ore - Annalisa Volpone
- CFU
- 6
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2025
- Offered
- 2026/27
- Sector
- L-LIN/10
- Type of study-unit
- Opzionale (Optional)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- ENGLISH
- Contents
- Romanticism and Science: Imagination, Nature, and the Poetic Mind in Blake, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats
This course explores the dynamic relationship between Romantic poetry and the new scientific culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through the work of William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats, students will examine how Romantic poets engaged with, contested, and reimagined the emerging discourses of natural philosophy (astronomy, geology, chemistry, and medicine). Rather than opposing poetry to science, the course situates both within a shared inquiry into the nature of the cosmos, the origins of life, and the powers of the creative mind. The act of poetic creation itself — its sources, its energies, and its relation to the natural world — emerges as the central question that unites these four major figures. - Reference texts
- William Blake
Blake, William. The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Edited by David V. Erdman. Anchor Books, 1988. [Selected poems from Songs of Innocence and of Experience; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Major Works. Edited by H. J. Jackson. Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 2008. [The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan.]
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Major Works. Edited by Zachary Leader and Michael O’Neill. Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 2009. [Mont Blanc; Ode to the West Wind; selected passages from A Defence of Poetry.]
John Keats
Keats, John. The Major Works. Edited by Elizabeth Cook. Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 2008. [Ode to Psyche; Ode to a Nightingale; Ode on a Grecian Urn; To Autumn; selected letters on Negative Capability.]
Additional critical readings and contextual materials will be made available on Unistudium. - Educational objectives
- Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
Knowledge and Understanding
Acquire a solid knowledge of the primary poetic texts and their main historical and scientific contexts. Understand the broad relationship between Romantic poetry and the natural philosophy of the period, with particular reference to the poets and works studied in the course.
Applying Knowledge and Understanding
Read and analyse poetic texts with attention to imagery, form, and recurring themes. Identify connections between the poets’ language and the scientific culture of their time, drawing on the contextual material provided in the course.
Making Judgements
Develop an informed personal response to the texts studied, supported by close reading and contextual awareness. Begin to reflect on the broader significance of the relationship between literature and science in the Romantic period.
Communication Skills
Express critical observations on the texts and themes covered in the course clearly and coherently, both orally and in writing, using appropriate disciplinary language. Engage constructively in class discussion.
Learning Skills
Organise independent study effectively, integrating primary texts with the critical and contextual materials provided. Develop an openness to interdisciplinary perspectives in the study of literature. - Prerequisites
- A general knowledge of English literature is recommended. Some familiarity with the Romantic period, while not required, will prove helpful in following the course
- Teaching methods
- Lectures: Each class will begin with a contextual introduction providing historical and scientific background and an overview of the key themes and questions related to the texts under discussion.
Close Reading: Selected passages and poems will be examined in detail, line by line, to uncover layers of meaning, stylistic choices, and the inscription of scientific discourse within poetic language.
Class Discussions: Students are expected to participate actively, sharing interpretations and engaging critically with the primary texts
Students with disabilities and/or SLD, after consultation with the lecturer, may request teaching materials in accessible formats (presentations, handouts, exercises), to be provided in advance of the lessons if necessary, as well as the use of assistive technological tools during the study phase. For general information, please consult the University Services at: https://lettere.unipg.it/home/disabilita-e-dsa and contact the Department Representative (Prof. A. Di Pilla). - Other information
- Students with disabilities and/or SLD: for any information on University services, consult the page https://lettere.unipg.it/home/disabilita-e-dsa and contact the Disability and/or DSA Department Coordinator (prof. Alessandra Di Pilla: alessandra.dipilla@unipg.it).
- Learning verification modality
- A 2500-word essay to be submitted at least 10 days before the exam session, accompanied by a brief oral discussion of the themes and texts explored in the course (15 minutes max). Students with disabilities and/or SLD who, having completed regular accreditation through SOL, have obtained access to University services, can apply for compensatory tools, dispensatory measures and inclusive technologies ensured by law, to be requested and agreed with the teacher well in advance of tests and exams. For general information, consult the page https://www.unipg.it/disabilita-e-dsa and contact the Disability and/or SLD Department Coordinator (prof. Alessandra Di Pilla: alessandra.dipilla@unipg.it).
- Extended program
- This course examines the dialogue between Romantic poetry and the new scientific culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, tracing how four major poets — Blake, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats — engaged, contested, and reimagined the emergent discourses of natural philosophy. The central argument is that the Romantic imagination was not formed in opposition to science but in active, often polemical, conversation with it: with Newtonian optics and its mechanistic account of nature, with the vitalist revisions proposed by Priestley, Davy, and Erasmus Darwin, with the transformed astronomy of Herschel, and with the geological deep time opened by Hutton and Lyell.
The course opens with William Blake, whose prophetic critique of “single vision and Newton’s sleep” establishes the terms of the Romantic contestation of mechanistic natural philosophy. Through the Songs of Innocence and of Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, students will examine Blake’s construction of an alternative cosmology grounded in the primacy of creative energy and imaginative vision.
The second unit turns to Coleridge, whose engagement with the chemistry of Humphry Davy and with the broader currents of Romantic natural philosophy informs his understanding of the imagination as an organic, vitalist power. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan are read as complementary explorations of the mind's creative energies and its encounter with forces that exceed rational control. A comparative reading of Mont Blanc (Shelley) and Kubla Khan (Coleridge) will focus on the relationship between landscape, vision, and the powers of the natural world.
The third unit is devoted to Shelley, whose scientific formation — galvanism, chemistry, geology — permeates his poetry at the level of both image and argument. Mont Blanc is read as a meditation on geological deep time and the impersonal sublime; the Ode to the West Wind as a reworking of natural energy into a figure of poetic and political force. The Defence of Poetry situates the poet as the legislator of a world whose laws are those of creative imagination.
The final unit addresses Keats, for whom the encounter with science is at once a biographical fact — his medical training, his familiarity with the dissection room — and a constitutive element of his poetic thinking. The Odes are read as a sustained meditation on beauty, transience, and the capacity of the creative mind to inhabit uncertainty: the Negative Capability that Keats opposes to the irritable reaching after fact and reason.
Throughout, the course asks: how does Romantic poetry think through and against the scientific culture of its time? What conception of nature, of the mind, and of the creative act emerges from this encounter? And what is the legacy of this dialogue for our understanding of the relationship between literature and science more broadly?
Key themes:
The critique of Newtonian mechanism and the defence of imaginative vision
Vitalism, organic nature, and the poetics of energy
Geology, astronomy, and the sublime of deep time
The poet as natural philosopher: creativity, knowledge, and negative capability
Landscape, mind, and the inscription of scientific discourse in poetic language - Obiettivi Agenda 2030 per lo sviluppo sostenibile
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