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Citizens of the World

Module description

What did it mean to be a citizen of the world in the eighteenth century and Romantic period? This module, designed for specialist and non-specialists, explores the shift from the cosmopolitan view that the enlightened person was at home everywhere to the Romantic view that one may be an exile even in one’s own country. The module examines major works by Austen, Byron, Voltaire, Wollstonecraft, Shelley and Keats, as well as lesser-known texts, to build up a detailed view of eighteenth-century and Romantic literary culture. We will explore themes such as nation, empire, slavery, identity and literature’s evolving role in mediating between the self and the wider world.

Module aims - intentions of the module

• The module is designed to advance knowledge of eighteenth-century and Romantic period literature, with an emphasis on the national and international contexts in which it was produced. The module will enable you to bring a wide range of critical and theoretical techniques to bear on literary texts and other cultural artefacts and to develop individual expertise leading towards further study, including at postgraduate level.

• The module is organised broadly chronologically. It begins with two foundational texts of the cosmopolitan tradition, Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World and Voltaire’s Candide, before proceeding to a seminal text of British national identity, Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland. You will read Rousseau’s The Social Contract, a text which helped to form the ideals of the French Revolution, alongside poetry of liberty and revolution by Anna Letitia Aikin (Barbauld), William Blake, and William Wordsworth. Turning to the theme of empire, increasingly a vehicle for British encounters with the world, we read the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, the slavery narrative of Olaudah Equiano and Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park. The module then examines depictions of Europe and the Hellenic world through the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Byron and Keats, before turning to ideas of contagion by the foreign and perpetual exile of the self in the writings of Coleridge, John Polidori and Percy Shelley.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate an advanced appreciation of specific authors and texts from the eighteenth century and Romantic period
• 2. Demonstrate an advanced appreciation of the literary history and cultural context of the eighteenth century and Romantic period
• 3. Demonstrate a critical understanding of some of the key themes, topics and debates that emerge in eighteenth-century and Romantic texts
• 4. Engage in significant critical debates surrounding issues relating to the eighteenth century and Romantic period, e.g. nation and identity, empire, slavery and the cultural role of the artist

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Demonstrate an advanced ability to analyse the literature and visual art of an earlier era and to relate aesthetic concerns and modes of expression to historical context
• 6. Demonstrate an advanced ability to interrelate texts and discourses specific to their own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
• 7. Demonstrate an advanced ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary texts and visual culture

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 8. Through seminar work and presentations, demonstrate advanced communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups
• 9. Through essay-writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, an advanced capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
• 10. Through research for seminars, essays, and presentations demonstrate advanced proficiency in information retrieval and analysis
• 11. Through sitting their final examination, demonstrate advanced proficiency in the use of memory and in the development, organisation, and expression of ideas under pressure of time

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

The module begins with an examination of key literary texts of the eighteenth-century cosmopolitan tradition, as well as some of the ways in which that tradition can be questioned. It moves on to explore various geographical locales that represented examples of human civilisation and progress (or lack thereof). Lastly, it turns to Romantic period texts where cosmopolitanism was combined with an interest in the workings of imagination and, for some, the recasting of freedom of movement as fear of contagion.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Core reading:

• Oliver Goldsmith, Selected Writings, ed. John Lucas (Fyfield Books).
• Voltaire, Candide and Other Stories, trans. Roger Pearson (Oxford World’s Classics).
• Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, Journey to the Western Isles and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, ed. Peter Levi (Penguin Classics).
• Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, ed. Vincent Carretta (Penguin Classics).
• Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed. Claudia L. Johnson (Norton Critical Editions).
• Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, ed. Tone Brekke and Jon Mee (Oxford World’s Classics).
• Norton Anthology of English Literature, volume D (The Romantic Period), ed. Greenblatt, Abrams et al (Norton).
• Byron, Don Juan, ed. Steffan, Steffan and Pratt (Penguin Classics).
• Texts by Rousseau, Wheatley, Aikin and Polidori will be available as PDFs on the module ELE page.

Secondary reading:

• Ros Ballaster, Fabulous Orients: Fictions of the East in England, 1662-1785 (2005).
• John Barrell, The Spirit of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s (2006).
• Roderick Beaton, Byron’s War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution (2013).
• Alan Bewell, Romanticism and Colonial Disease (2003).
• John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1997).
• Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation (1992).
• Robert Fine, Cosmopolitanism (2007).
• David Higgins, Romantic Englishness: Nation, Empire, and Autobiography, 1780-1850 (2014).
• Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves (1991).
• Nigel Leask, Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing (2002).
• Jerome McGann, The Romantic Ideology (1983).
• William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004).
• Esther Wohlgemut, Romantic Cosmopolitanism (2009).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

Students registered on the course will be able to access the Citizens of the World ELE site. This will include a lecture schedule, a module reading list and useful internet links.

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=4933

Key words search

Cosmopolitanism, eighteenth century, Romanticism, nation, empire, slavery