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After some considerations of the social landscape of the 1830s and 40s, we will read and discuss a wide range of texts from early Victorian Britain--chiefly art criticism and social commentary, poetry and prose romances, autobiographies and fiction--and examine romantic and psychological aspects of the poetry and romances, social implications of the art criticism, and aesthetic principles reflected in the fiction. We will also consider some of the ways in which region, class, gender and intended audience influenced these texts, and seek common motifs and modes of organization which may have crossed generic or class boundaries. The works to be read and discussed will include:
Art: John Ruskin, selections from THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE and MODERN PAINTERS, slides of Pre-Raphaelite art
Poetry: selections from THE POETRY OF THE VICTORIAN PERIOD, ed. Jerome Buckley--poems by Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, William Morris, and others
Prose Romances: D.G. Rossetti's HAND AND SOUL, and William Morris's A DREAM and GOLDEN WINGS
Signs of the Times: Harriet Martineau, AUTOBIOGRAPHY; Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO; Carlyle, SARTOR RESARTUS; Working-class poets--Samuel Bamford and Janet Hamilton
Women Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Augusta Webster
Fiction: Dinah Craik, OLIVE; George Eliot, MIDDLEMARCH; Elizabeth Gaskell, MARY BARTON; Charles Dickens, BARNABY RUDGE
I will ask students to write two or three shorter papers, or one long (25 page) critical essay.
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