eng430

English 430: Victorian Literature and Culture: Poetry, Prose, Fiction, Drama

Dr. Pidge Molyneaux
Office: Olney 146

Phone: Office: (215) 951-1150
e-mail: molyneam@lasalle.edu
or molyneau@bellatlantic.net

Required Texts:

Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest
Bram Stoker. Dracula
Spiral-bound book to be paid for at Book Store

Philosophy of the Course:

This course is designed to introduce you to the complexities and paradoxes of what has come to be called the "Victorian" age. I think the course’s delight and challenge arise from the realization that there is no single characterization of this period or of the literature produced within it. I also think the concerns of the Victorians--about scientific revolution, religious doubt, economic and political upheaval, labor unrest, the "Woman Question," and imperialism, for example--are issues as pressing to 20th-century American university students as they were to 19th-century British women and men. To contextualize the material we read and experience, we will take a theoretical approach loosely defined as "cultural criticism" (other approaches will also be discussed). In line with that approach, I urge you not to impose stereotypical concepts of Victorianism on the material so much as let the works themselves teach you about Victorianism. We will view works on their own terms as far as that is possible: for example, in relation to other works, socio-economic contexts, or broad social discourses (about factory conditions, women’s education, the role of art in material life, etc.). Much of the work will be "hands on" and I urge that group presentations (see below) take an interdisciplinary approach.

Course Requirements:

Papers: Either two 7-8 page papers or one 15-18 page term paper

Exams: Two exams, a midterm and a cumulative final

Quizzes: There will be occasional unannounced quizzes

Group Presentations: Each student will participate in one group presentation of no more than 20 minutes. Each group will provide a one-page outline of the presentation; each student will provide a summary of her or his contribution to the presentation

Academic Honesty: You must fully and accurately document, in MLA style, any research you use for this course

Attendance: Though I will occasionally lecture, the course will take a seminar format; thus, consistent attendance, careful preparation, and vigorous engagement in class discussion are required. I realize that emergencies arise and life throws curves, but require notification. I can be reached at any time at the phone number and e-mail address listed above. Any unexcused (the operative word) absence will cost you one point from your final grade

Grades:

Paper(s) @ 15% & 20%
Exams @ 20% & 20%
Quizzes
Group Presentation

35%
40%
10%
15%

A = 95 A- = 93 B+ = 88
B = 86 B- = 84 C+ = 80
C = 78 C- = 76 D+ = 72
D = 70 D- = 68

Schedule of Readings and Assignments:

Week 1: Introduction to the course; assignments for group presentations

Week 2: Lecture: Theoretical Issues (handout);
Alfred Lord Tennyson: "The Lady of Shallott"; "The Palace of Art"
Tennyson: "Ulysses"; selections from In Memoriam

Week 3: Tennyson: In Memoriam;
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Sonnets from the Portuguese; Book I, from Aurora Leigh
E. Browning: Aurora Leigh

Week 4: Robert Browning: "My Last Duchess"; "The Laboratory"; "Youth and Art"
R. Browning: "Fra Lippo Lippi"; "Andrea del Sarto"
Caroline Norton, Sonnets 4 and 5; Ann BrontÁ , "Lines Written at Thorpe Green"; Emily BrontÁ , "No Coward Soul Is Mine"; Margaret Veley, "A Town Garden"

Week 5: Group Presentation #1: The Industrial Revolution and Problems of Labor (e.g., Luddism, Chartism, Orders in Council, Reform Bill);
Group Presentation #2: Utilitarianism (e.g., Bentham, Mill)
The "Condition of England" novels: Charles Dickens, Chs. 2-5, 8, and 11, from Hard Times; Charles Kingsley, Chs. 9-10, from Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet; Thomas Henry Mayhew, from London Labour and the London Poor

Week 6: Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton

Week 7: Group Presentation #3: Charles Darwin (The Origin of Species) and Thomas Henry Huxley; Reading: Darwin, Chapter IV: "Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest"; Constance Naden, "Natural Selection"; Agnes Mary Robinson, "Darwinism"
Group Presentation #4: Oxford Movement: High, Low, and Broad Churches;
Religious upheavals and their effect on contemporary thought
Reading: John Henry (Cardinal) Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua
John Stuart Mill, from Autobiography

Week 8: Thomas Carlyle, "The Everlasting No," "Centre of Indifference," "The Everlasting Yea," from Sartor Resartus; Midterm Exam

Week 9: Paper #1 due; Group Presentation #5: Karl Marx, Capital; Reading: Karl Marx, from Capital: I; Clementina Black, "What Is a Fair Wage?"
Group Presentation #6: British Imperialism; Reading: Rudyard Kipling, all poems in course pack
Roundtable Discussion: Elsie Michie: "White Chimpanzees and Oriental Despots: Racial Stereotyping and Edward Rochester" (handout)

Week 10: John Ruskin, "The Stones of Venice"
Matthew Arnold: "The Scholar Gypsy"
Arnold: "Sweetness and Light," from Culture and Anarchy

Week 11: Group Presentation #7: Feminism: the "New Woman"; prostitution and the "fallen woman"; Sarah Stickney Ellis; Reading: Coventry Patmore, from "The Angel in the House"; John Stuart Mill, Ch. I, The Subjection of Women (14-29)
Thomas Hardy, "An Imaginative Woman" (handout)
Group Presentation #8: Pre-Raphaelites, the PRB, Arts and Crafts Movement
Reading: William Morris, "The Defense of Guenevere

Week 12: Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market"
Walter Pater, Conclusion, from Studies in the History of the Renaissance

Week 13: Thanksgiving Holidays

Week 14: Bram Stoker, Dracula

Week 15: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Geing Earnest
Papers due; course evaluations