British Literature II teaches students British Literature from approximately the age of the Industrial Revolution, i.e. the last decades of the 18th Century, up to the modern period. It aims to provide students with a solid grounding in British Romantic, Victorian, and Modern Literature and Thought. Students are introduced to the historical context of the literary pieces they are reading, including social, political, and cultural history. Students also study formal aspects of literature, including word choice, literary techniques, and style. Students are taught how to read critically and to discuss and evaluate the significance and contribution of literature to human civilization.

This course is designed to give the student knowledge about the major trends in the 18th, to 21st Centuries vis-à-vis the major writers of the times – William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, John Keats, Gordon Byron, T.S. Eliot et al. Besides reading the plays and poems of the period, we will also note the changes in culture, politics, laws and justice, science (Relativity) and the shift in Literary History from verse to prose in the development of the Novel.

1: The Norton Anthology of English Literature
2: The Cambridge History of English Literature
3: Longman: “An Illustrated History of Britain.”