Victorian Literature

This is a course description for informational purposes only. When this course is next offered in fall 2006, a full syllabus will be available via Blackboard to students registered in the course. Readings are subject to change.

English IV: Victorian Literature (ENG 2035)

Course Description:

This course offers an introduction to key authors, texts, and preoccupations of the Victorian era, which takes its name from the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) and which falls between the ages of Romanticism and modernism. Victorian authors sought to explore identity and to represent the human experience under the influence of such powerful social forces and ideas as industrialization, imperialism, the “Woman Question,” and evolutionary theory. Writers of both sexes and diverse geographical and social backgrounds achieved critical and popular success in the dominant literary form of the period, the realist novel. Poets too created complex psychological characterizations, particularly in the widely practiced form of the “dramatic monologue.” In addition to exploring the Victorians’ literary representations of their own era, we will attend to how they viewed their own time and its literature in relation to the past, and how they anticipated the concerns of the modern age.
ENG 2035 counts towards the English major as a core course.

Readings:

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)

Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854)

George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859)

selected poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Matthew Arnold (list of poets subject to change)

Course requirements:

Two short analytical papers (4-5 pages; the first one can be revised), a midterm exam, a final exam, and class participation.

Course Objectives:

to introduce you to prominent concerns exhibited and techniques deployed by Victorian writers
to acquaint you thoroughly with the three novels and various poems we will read, as well as with historical, biographical, and critical context
to deepen and extend your understanding of terms and methods used in college-level literary criticism
to prepare English majors for the Victorian literature component of the senior comprehensive exams
to develop your skills as critical readers—particularly close reading, making connections within a literary work, and generating thought-provoking questions—through active reading and guided class preparation
to develop your skills at presenting your questions and ideas verbally, and at responding to those of others, through seminar-style class discussions
to develop your skills as critical writers about literature through analytical paper assignments, including an opportunity for revision, and essay exams.

Back to Prof. Wells' homepage