British Literature 1780-1900: Romantic and Victorian Connections

Course Description            Course Objectives            Materials            Assignments            Schedule

Course Description

This is a survey course of British literature ranging from 1780 to the turn of the twentieth century. The time we will be studying spans what is usually broken into two distinct literary periods the Romantic Era and the Victorian Age. This course is a survey of these two time periods. As we move steadily from 1780 forward we will examine precisely what these distinctions mean, what purpose they serve and what the relationship between works of these periods are. Through this course we will examine cultural shifts that change the landscape of literature as well as identifying perennial concerns prevalent in the writing on both sides of Romantic/Victorian divide. Over the course of this semester we will read different genres including poetry, novels, drama, and essays from some of the most important British writers.

Course Objectives

• To read widely and engage deeply with the literature of the Romantic and Victorian periods.
• To examine the relationship between literary production and the politics and cultural interests of the periods.
• To examine the relationship between the two periods.
• To interrogate the idea of periodization in relation to important literary works.
• To support and further develop students’ skills at closely-reading, analyzing and interpreting literary texts, traditions, and methods both orally and in writing.

Materials

The Longman Anthology of British Literature Volume 2, 4th edition. General editor David Damrosch. New York: Longman, 2010.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. New York: Norton, 1995.

Bram Stoker, Dracula. New York: Penguin, 2003.

In addition to the texts above, some of our readings will be posted on our class Blackboard site (http://my.usf.edu). You will be required to read and print these readings and bring them to class.

Assignments

Course Requirements:

Participation 15%

Discussion Board 15%

Short Paper 15%

Final Paper 20%

Midterm Exam 15%

Final Exam 20%

Discussion Board

Students will be required to participate in an electronic discussion devoted to the issues of this class. The discussions will be on-going, but each student is required to post at least one message per week. Students are also required to read the posts of the other students before class. Hence all posts need to be submitted on time. Posts are to be sent the evening before the class for which they are assigned. They MUST be received by class time. Note: always bring a hard-copy to class in case of technical failure. Computer failure or inability to get to a machine does not excuse you from writing your post. I will pose a question or two on the class material each week, and you may choose to reply to that question or to any post on the list. Your writings should demonstrate a serious effort to analyze, question or understand the literature of the course.

To be counted for your weekly writing, your post must be at least 250 words in length (a little less than a double-spaced typewritten page). I will be strict in enforcing this minimum length.

Short Paper

Your short paper will be a 3-5 page paper focused on examining the relationship between a piece of literature from the Romantic period and a piece of literature from the Victorian period. You will choose a work we have already read for class and look at it in relation to a work we will be reading which deals with similar concerns or themes. For instance, you might wish to compare and contrast the problems of industry as presented in William Blake’s “London” and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children,” or Percy Shelley nihilistic vision in “Mutability,” and Matthew Arnold’s elegy to faith in “Dover Beach.” I will provide more details later in the semester.

Final Paper

Your final paper will be a 6-8 page critical paper on a relevant topic of your choosing. It should examine in depth at least one of the works we have read. For this paper you will be required to utilize scholarly sources and to situate your thesis within the realm of relevant scholarship. I will provide more details later in the semester.

Class-Participation

Class participation means coming to class alert and prepared. You must bring all of your materials, including the readings for the week. Your class participation grade is based upon your engagement with the course, your participation in discussion, reading, and in-class activities such as workshops.

Course Schedule

This schedule should be considered tentative as readings and assignments may be added or changed by the instructor to meet the needs of the class.

All texts must be read before the date they are listed on the syllabus

Week One: Introductions

1/10: Introducing the class

1/12: The two eras in conversation

Reading: “The Romantics and their Contemporaries” 1-14

William Wordsworth, “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey” 390-4

Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach” 1562

Week Two: Romantic Revolutions

1/17: The Political Context

Readings: “The French Revolution and its Reverberations” 14-8

Edmund Burke from Reflections on the Revolution in France 109-118

Mary Wollstonecraft from “A Vindication of the Rights of Men” 119-126

Thomas Paine from The Rights of Man 128-134

William Blake, “And Did Those Feet” (Blackboard)

1/19: The Poetic Response

Readings: Charlotte Smith “The Dead Beggar” 86-7

William Blake, “London” 184

Percy Bysshe Shelley “Sonnet: England in 1819” 783

-“The Mask of Anarchy” 784-794

William Wordsworth, “The World is Too Much With Us” 436

Discussion Board Post due

Week Three: Romantic Reformations

1/24: Faith (?)

William Blake, “Holy Thursday” (i) and “Holy Thursday” (ii) 171 and 175

-“The Lamb” and “The Tyger” 166-7 and 182-3

-The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 189-201

Samuel Taylor Coleridge , The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 565-582

1/26: Doubt and alternative visions

Reading: Mary Robinson, “The Haunted Beach” 281-2

William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up” 513

-“Ode: Intimations on Immortality” 514-9

Percy Shelley “The Necessity of Atheism” (Blackboard)

-“Mutability” (Blackboard)

Discussion Board post due

Week Four: Romantic Aesthetics

1/31: The Sublime

Reading: Edmund Burke, from A Philosophical Inquiry 37-44

Lord Byron, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Canto IV 711-13

Percy Shelley, “Mont Blanc” 776-80

-“Ozymandius” 782

2/2: The Subjective and the Objective

William Wordsworth, from “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads 394-406

-“I wandered lonely as a cloud” 512

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

-“The Eolian Harp” 559-61

-“Kubla Kahn” 602-4

Mary Robinson

-“To the Poet Coleridge” 604-6

John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 913-5

Discussion Board post due

Week Five: Romanticism and Gender

2/7: Vindicating the Rights of Women

Reading: Mary Wollstonecraft from A Vindication of the Rights of Women 288-310

Anna Letitia Barbauld, “The Rights of Women” 310-1

Ann Yearsley: “The Indifferent Shepherdess to Colin” 311-2

William Blake from Mary 313-4

2/9: Mothers and Daughters

Mary Shelley, Proserpine (Blackboard)

Discussion Board post due

Week Six: Romantic Monstrosity

2/14: (Re)Composing Frankenstein

Reading: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Vol. I 7-58

2/16: What’s so modern about this Prometheus?

Reading: Frankenstein Vol. II 60-101

Short paper due.

Discussion Board post due

Week Seven: From Monster to Midterm

2/21: (De)Composing Frankenstein

Reading: Frankenstein Vol. III 103-56

2/23: Midterm Review Day

Discussion Board post due

Week Eight: Midterm

2/28: Midterm

3/1: Introducing the Victorians

Reading: “Victorian and the Victorians” 1049-52

“The Age of Empire” 1063-66

Thomas Carlyle, from Past and Present 1076-1083

Discussion Board post due

Week Nine: Foreign and Domestic

3/6: Victorians Abroad

Reading: Sir Richard Francis Burton, from A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah (Blackboard)

Sir Henry Morton Stanley from Through the Dark Continent 1762-8

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” 1148-54

Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” 1777

3/8: Victorians At Home

Reading: Thomas Carlyle, “Captains of Industry” 1083-88

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “The Cry of the Children” 1140-3

Charles Dickens, “A Walk in the Workhouse” (Blackboard)

Henry Mayhew, from London Labour and London Poor 1108-12

Discussion Board post due

Week Ten: Spring Break- No Class

Week Eleven: Faith and Doubt

3/20: Faith

Reading: Christina Rossetti “Up-Hill”160

-“Goblin Market” 1650-63

John Henry Cardinal Newman from Apologia Pro Vita Sua 1306-12

3/22: No Class- Reading and Research Day

Week Twelve: Dount, and Gender and the New Woman

3/27: Doubt

Reading: Charles Darwin from On the Origin of the Species 1272-7

-From The Descent of Man 1277-83

Ludwig Feuerbach, from The Essence of Christianity (Blackboard)

Matthew Arnold, “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” 1567-72

Charles Algernon Swinburne, “Hymn to Proserpine” 1690
3/29: Women and Men

Reading: Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses” 1189-90

Augusta Webster, “Circe” (Blackboard)

Robert Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover” 1325-6

-“My Last Duchess” 1328-9

Rosamund Marriott Watson, “Ballad of the Bird-Bride” (Blackboard)

Discussion Board post due

Week Thirteen: Aesthetics

4/3: Art Theory

Reading: John Ruskin, from Modern Painters 1493-1505

Walter Pater, from The Renaissance 1693-1700

Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray 1828-9

-selections from “The Critic as Artist,” and “The Decay of Lying” (Blackboard)

4/5: Art and Artists

Reading: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Burden of Nineveh” 1618-21

Christina Rossetti, “In An Artist’s Studio”1647

Robert Browning, “Fra Lippo Lippi” 1347-56

Discussion Board post due

Week Fourteen: Victorian Social Comedy

4/10: The Idle Aesthete

Reading: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest Acts I-II

4/12: Performative Reinvention

Reading: The Importance of Being Earnest Act III

Discussion Board post due

Week Fifteen: A Very Victorian Monster

4/17: Orient and Occident

Reading: Bram Stoker, Dracula chapters I-XVI 7-232

4/19: The Other at Home

Reading: Dracula XVII-XXII 233-320

Discussion Board post due

Week Sixteen:

4/24: The End?

Reading: Finish Dracula 321-402

4/26: Last Day of Class.

Final Paper due

Your final exam is on Thursday May 3rd from 3:00-5:00 in BSN 1200 (our normal classroom.) If you have a direct conflict between exams or if you have three or more exams scheduled for the same day please contact me before finals week.

Course Description            Course Objectives            Materials            Assignments            Schedule

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