From Victorian to Modern: British Literature 1840-1930
"Fantine" 1886, Fantine is a character in Victor Hugo's 1862 Les Misérables. Impregnated and abandoned by a wealthy student, she is forced into prostitution and eventually dies of poverty-induced tuberculosis. Margaret Bernadine Hall was an English social realist painter who spent most of her career in Paris and painted "Fantine" a year after Hugo's death. | From Victorian to Modern:British Literature 1840-1930SyllabusThis course will explore several literary genres—essays, poems, novels, short stories, alternate world fictions, and life writings—by British, Afro-British, and Anglo-Indian authors of the period. We will discuss ways in which language, plot, emotion, and popular forms such as ballads, monologues, and serial fiction convey cultural meanings to their audiences, as well as how publishing venues and social assumptions influenced what could be written and transmitted. Along the way, the class will consider themes of gender, non-standard sexualities, race, social class, economic disruption, religious differences, and domestic and international violence. To supplement our written texts, on occasion students will view nineteenth and early twentieth-century artworks and listen to songs of the period. Sample texts will be chosen from the following: poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Augusta Webster, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, Lionel Johnson, Toru Dutt, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen; fiction by Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Sarah Grand, Israel Zangwill, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Virginia Woolf, and E. M. Forster; utopias by William Morris and Rokeya Hossain; nonfiction by Karl Marx and John Ruskin; and an autobiographical account by Mary Seacole. Students will be asked to prepare questions for class discussion and give a 10-minute oral presentation on a topic of their choice. They will also post 5 two-page ICON postings on our readings, and submit two six-page essays, or alternatively, one longer essay or equivalent final project. |
Course Syllabus
August 27th Tuesday introduction; course information; 19th century society; forms of publication
Unit on Industrialization and Its Discontents
August 29th Thursday Victorian background; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "The Cry of the Children"
September 3rd Tuesday Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
September 5th Thursday North and South
September 10th Tuesday Karl Marx, "The Communist Manifesto," parliamentary reports, video on factory investigation
Unit on Art and Its Social Context
September 12th Thursday John Ruskin, selections from Modern Painters, "The Nature of Gothic"
First Icon Posting Due September 13th-15th
September 17th Tuesday Alfred Tennyson, "The Lady of Shallot"
September 19th Thursday Robert Browning, "Fra Lippo Lippi"
September 24th Tuesday slides, the Pre-Raphaelites
September 26th Thursday Augusta Webster, "A Castaway"
Second Icon Posting due October 4th-6th
October 1st Tuesday George Eliot, Mill on the Floss
October 3rd Thursday, Mill on the Floss
October 8th Tuesday Mill on the Floss
Unit on Far and Future Worlds
October 10th Thursday background on Crimean War; Mary Seacole, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands
October 15th Tuesday Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole
October 17th Thursday Rajmohan's WifeBankimchandra Chattahirkwy (Chatterjee), Rajmohan's Wife; selection from Peter Fryer, Black People in the British Empire
October 22nd Rajmohan's Wife
October 27th Thursday Begum Rokeya, Sultana's Dream
Third Icon Posting Due October 25th-27th
October 29th Tuesday William Morris, News from Nowhere
October 31th Thursday News from Nowhere, "Art and the Beauty of the Earth"
Title, Bibliography, and Abstract for Paper due November 1st-3rd
Unit on Early Modernism and "The Great War"
November 5th Tuesday background on modernism; Oscar Wilde, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"
November 7th Thursday First World War Poetry: Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon
First essay due 6+ pages Friday November 8th
November 12th Tuesday First World War poetry, Isaac Rosenberg, women poets including Charlotte Mew
November 14th Thursday Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Fourth Icon Posting Due November 15th-17th
November 19th Tuesday Virginia Woolf, Orlando
November 21st Thursday E. M. Forster, Maurice
Fifth Icon Posting Due November 29th-December 3rd
Title and Short Bibliography for final paper due December 3rd
Thanksgiving break
December 3rd Tuesday E. M. Forster, Maurice
December 5th Thursday Maurice, beginning of presentations
Exam week: Tuesday December 10th
Final exam: presentation of abridged version of your essays, Tuesday December 10th
FINAL 6-8 PAGE ESSAY DUE DECEMBER 13th, 2024