Spring 2009

ROMANTIC POETS
Romantic Poetry: We Are All Children of the Romantics

This is a course about the 19th century revolution in Western thought that gave the masses (you and me, in fact) a new view of politics and Nature and brought us out into the streets. The folk and rock musicians of the 1960s were carrying the banner woven by the Romantic poets a century and a half before.

This course looks at those poets who read each other, hung out together, and saw themselves as part of a shared crusade. We will talk about how the Rights of Man and the Divinity of Nature rose out of the Age of Reason (and why they all loved these high-blown phrases), then how poets took the lead in seeking a new religion. We will drink the "mild of paradise" with Wordsworth (there was a boy. . .), Coleridge (the pains of hope), Shelley (falling on the thorns of life), Keats (forever on the edge of climax), and even the sex object cynic, Byron (what are all things, but a show?). We will enjoy the fiery imagery and the naive passion of a poetry that was meant to be spoken, in voices astonishingly fresh.

Prerequisite(s):

EXEDNC; noncredit;

Instructor: Douglas Kenning

Douglas Kenning, Ph.D., has a B.A. in Ecology and an M.A. in Drama from U.S. Universities, and finally a Ph.D. in Literature and Philosophy from Edinburgh University, Scotland. In addition to being a field biologist, engineer, playwright, teacher, and professional actor in the U. S., he has lived overseas for decades, teaching poetry and drama in Tunisia, Japan and Sicily. He has published books and written articles on subjects as diverse as Shakespeare, travel, Romantic Poetry, drama, and Japanese Poetry. He lives half the year in the Bay Area, active in the theatre community, and the other half in Sicily, studying the Greeks and running a tour business. He has taught four courses for OLLI at SSU.

  • 6 mtgs: Th, Apr 2-May 14, 3-5pm, no class May 7
  • East Rec Center
  • EXEDNC; noncredit;
  • class# 4229