It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age.
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
The course will also include representative novels by Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf. Short lectures will supplement class discussions. M. H. Abrams, et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature , vol. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse .