checking off lists

i'm feeling quite productive this monday...nothing like a new week!

my list isn't long...it's hard to keep it short...but i try to keep it simple

making it easy and stress-free to cross things off my list.

one thing on my list has got me feeling absolutely giddy today:

school.

last summer i was in asheville, north carolina.

next summer i'll be in oxford, england.

i'm thinking about roaming around oxford's lincoln college campus,

browsing through their world-renowned library,

and attending class with my peers in my professor's quarters.

it's going to be a dream come true for sure.

within the next month or so i've got to make a big decision:

which class do i take?

i only get to take one. one!

how does one choose?

i've narrowed it down to two choices:

one:

early romanticism.

This course will chart the evolution of romanticism by locating its

origins in earlier eighteenth-century writing and by examining a number of key texts from the “first generation” of romantic writers of the

1790s and early 1800s. The course will explore early romanticism from

a variety of perspectives—political, social, literary, aesthetic. We will

focus in particular on the following topics: sensibility and sentiment, the

sublime, landscapes of the mind, rudeness and primitivism, the role of

women. The list of texts below is not comprehensive. Students will be

encouraged to pursue individual lines of enquiry and to read widely for

their written papers.

two:

pre-raphaelitism to decadence: literature and vision

The Victorian art critic John Ruskin once thundered that

“Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry,

prophecy, and religion—all in one.” This course explores the

intersections, borrowings, and clashes of verbal and visual cultures in Victorian Britain, from the birth of the Pre-Raphaelite

movement in the mid century to the Decadence of the 1890s.

We will discuss issues such as the place and value of art in the

second half of the nineteenth century, pre-Raphaelite poetry and

painting, aestheticism, art for art’s sake, ekphrasis, ghostly visions,

sexuality, Symbolism, Decadent writing. Our focus in class will

be primarily on literary texts, but there will be opportunities

for integrating visual material and for exploring Oxford’s superb

late-Victorian heritage. A course pack with additional reading

will be given out at the beginning of the course.

which one would you choose?