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Syllabus
Room 203 EPB, Mondays and Wednesdays 3:30-5 p. m.
Instructor: Florence Boos, 319 EPB, 335-0434 (answering
machine); 338-4383
until midnight; e-mail florence-boos@uiowa.edu (checked
during week).
Office hours: Tuesday 4-5 and most afternoons after class;
before class and Tuesdays and Thursday before 2:30 by
appointment.
Class Texts ordered at IMU:
- Jerome Buckley, ed. Poetry of the Victorian Period
- Margaret Higgonet, Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century
- Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
- Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
- Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
- Dinah Craik, Olive
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
I will give you a handout of selections from The Seven Lamps of Architecture,
Modern Painters, and The Stones of Venice from John Rosenberg's The Genius of
John Ruskin.
Also we will read The Autobiography of Mary Smith, which will require that you
make xerox copies from my original copy.
I will provide you with a handout of working-class and dialect poetry by Janet
Hamilton, Samuel Bamford, Edwin Waugh and Fanny Forrester.
This will be my first experience in teaching a class with web-based
discussion. It's all new to me, but I'm hoping your greater youth will make
the process seem quite natural and pleasant to you. Our class web site is
http://www.twist.lib.uiowa.edu/earvict/. Our password is [ ]. Your part
in this will be to access the noticeboard before noon of each day class is
held, to leave a message with two observations on suggested questions for
discussion on the material. Each Monday and Wednesday before coming to class I
will read and print out your comments, bring them to class, and use them in
initiating our discussion.
Of course you are welcome to comment back and forth to each other and to
post additional comments and notices. At the onset, though, it seems wise to
start with something moderately simple to be sure it works.
The Victorian bibliographies listed under course materials will be expanded
and made more current during the semester.
Tentative Syllabus:
August 24th Introduction
August 26th Ruskin, selections from Rosenberg, Seven Lamps of Architecture and
Modern Painters
August 31st -----
September 2nd Ruskin, "The Nature of Gothic"
September 7th Tennyson, early poems including "The Palace of Art"
September 9th Tennyson, "In Memoriam"
September 14th Mary Smith
September 16th Mary Smith
September 21st Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
September 23rd Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
September 28th Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
September 30th Pre-Raphaelite slides
October 5th Browning, selections from Men and Women
October 7th Browning, "Pompilia"
October 12th Browning, "Pompilia"
October 14th Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
October 19th Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
October 21st Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "The Cry of the Children," "The
Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" and "Mother and Poet"
October 26th book one of Aurora Leigh
October 28th book two of Aurora Leigh
November 4th Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
November 6th Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
November 9th Mary Barton
November 11th working-class and dialect poets: Hamilton, Bamford, Waugh and
Forrester
November 16th William Morris, "The Defense of Guenevere"
November 18th D. G. Rossetti, "The Blessed Damozel" and "Jenny"; Augusta
Webster, "The Castaway"
November 23rd Rossetti and Webster
November 25th ----
November 30th
December 2nd George Eliot, Middlemarch
December 7th George Eliot, Middlemarch
December 9th George Eliot, Middlemarch
exam week: final discussion and slides
Course assignments:
In addition to your messages on the course page noticeboard, you may write
one, two or three papers, but the total should be no less than twenty-five
pages, plus a bibliography of sources consulted. Past experience indicates
that those who choose shorter papers are more likely to finish them promptly;
on the other hand, you will need a long critical essay for submission to the
Ph. D. qualifying committee. If you give me a first draft a week or more
before you intend to submit your essay(s), I will do my best to give you
timely responses to help in revising.
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