overview

English Literature: London, England
Romanticism and the Age of Revolution

July 6 - August 2, 2008

English-London Overview

This program offers students an opportunity to encounter first hand the traces of one of the most turbulent and exciting moments in London's history: the age of Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, which gave birth to the cultural explosion known as Romanticism. Visits to museums, galleries and archival collections—including Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of London and the British Museum—will allow program participants to examine some of the age's revolutionary pamphlets, cultural manifestos, and experiments in visual culture, including many unique examples of work that can be seen nowhere else. Students will also explore some of the remaining urban and architectural relics of Romantic London in a number of walking tours in neighborhoods such as Lambeth and Soho that will aim to revive our sense of the daily life of a bygone age. Lectures and discussions will shape the learning experience and will help students to breathe life into what might once have seemed mere dry words. Students will also be encouraged to explore contemporary London and to discover on their own the complex ways in which signs and traces of the past live on into the present in what is arguably the world’s first global city.

The academic program for “London and the Age of Revolution” will combine and integrate two separate courses, English 169A and English 181E (5 credits each). English 169A will cover the contextual background of the Age of Revolution and London in the early Romantic period; English 181E will focus on the poetry and visual art (paintings, drawings, engravings) of William Blake, and will give students the chance to frame their understanding of London through the work of the most revolutionary poet and artist of his age.

Directed by Professor Saree Makdisi, Department of English, UCLA. For more program information, please click on the links at the top of this page.

Financial aid is available to qualified UCLA students. All other students should inquire about financial aid at their home institution. For more information on financial aid, click here.