TTh 5:30-6:45 p. m., Room 208
Instructor: Florence Boos (florence-boos@uiowa.edu)
Office: 319 EPB
office phone
335-0434 (answering machine)
Office hours: most evenings after class; Thursday 2:45-3:45; and Wednesday afternoons by appointment.
Textbooks ordered for Course at IMU: Broadview Shorter Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory, ed. Thomas Collins and Vivienne Rundle
handouts for working-class poets, Hamilton and Laycock
At least once each week, before 12 noon on the day of class, please visit our site, click on the link to WebCT, and write a commentary on one of the readings for class. I will read and in some cases print them out each day before class to use as a basis for part of the day's discussion. They will show on a "noticeboard," so you can read and respond to each other's comments.
In addition to posting weekly questions to our class web site, you will be asked to write a six page critical/research paper, and a six page final take-home examination. Your critical/research paper must be based on research in the biographies, book-length critical studies and critical articles on the author you have chosen (that is, you cannot merely use web-page citations). The research paper is due November 15th and the take-home final during exam week. In place of a written final examination, you will be asked to briefly summarize the contents of your take-home final to the class.
Suggested Topics for Critical Essay, abstract due November 10th:
Be sure to consider elements of style, form and language as well as theme.
Rhetoric and Audience in "The Cry of the Children"
The Industrial Revolution, The Factory Acts and "The Cry of the Children"
The Rupture of Familial Relationships in "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"
Race, Color and Morality in "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"
Nature and Violence in "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"
Necessary Infanticide? The Effectivenes of the Ending of "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"
Passion and Anger in "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"
"The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" as an Aboltiionist Poem
Social Issues in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Cry of the Chidlren" and "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"
Anger, Irony, and Sarcasm in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poetry
E. B. Browning's and Augusta Webster's Portryals of Social Outcasts
Maternity and Children in the Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Bronwning and Augusta Webster
Augusta Webster's "The Castaway" and Victorian Debates on 'The Woman Question'
Contrasting Views of the Fallen Woman: D. G. Rossetti's "Jenny" and Augusta Webster's "The Castaway"
The Victorian Dramatic Monologue as a Vehicle for Social Criticism
Saint or Sinenr: Reprsentations of Women in DGR's "The Blessed Damozel" and "Jenny"
Character or Situation? Identity in the DRamatic Monologues of Robert Browning and Augusta Webster
Art and Character: Aesthetics and Morality in "Andrea Del Sarto" and "Fra Lippo Lippi"
Vasari's Lives and Robert Browning's Dramatic Monologues on Artists
Two Forms of the Dramatic Monologue: Browning's "Fra Lippo Lippi" (or "Andrea del Sarto") and Amy Levy's "Xantippe"
"A Minor Poet" and "Xantippe": Levy's Deathbed Monologues
What Are Those Goblin Fruits:: Sensuous Experience and Repression in Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"
Sisterly Love in "Goblin Market"
Redemption in "Goblin Market": The Devotional Life of Christina Rossetti
Fairytale as Allegory in "Goblin Market"
Social Criticism in "Goblin Market"
Fairytale as Allegory in "Goblin Market"/Social Criticism in "Goblin Market"/ "Goblin Market" as a Tale of Sisterhood
Rhythm and Meaning in Christina Rossetti's Lyrics
Patterns of Language, Imagery and Epiphany in Tennyson's "In Memoriam"
Tennyson's Reshaping of Classical Myth in "Ulysses" and "The Lotus-Eaters"
Desire and Rest in "Ulysses" and "The Lotus-Eaters"
Healing in "In Memoriam"
Death and Immortality in "In Memoriam"
Science and Faith in "In Memoriam"
Belief and Unbelief in "In Memoriam"
A Victorian Rewriting of Malory: William Morris's "The Defence of Guenevere"
Passion and Rhetoric in William Morris's "The Defence of Guenevere"
"The Defence of Guenevere" and Morris's Artwork
Love in the Poetry of Morris and Swinburne
Humor and Social Criticism in Working-Class Poetry (Bamford, Hamilton)
The Voice of the Working-Class Poet
Isolation and Imagery in Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" and "To Marguerite, Continued"
Repression and the SEarch for Meaning in "The Burdied Life" and "A Summer NIght"
The Search for Certainty in "A Summer Night" and "Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse"
Arnold's Poetry as a critique of Victorian Society
Arnodld's Criticism and Poetry: "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" and His Early Poems of Isolation
Elegaic Language, Imagery and Sound in Hopkins' "Spring and Fall" and "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire"
Selfhood and Art in "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" and "Pied Beauty"
Dicion, Imagery and Rhythm in Hopkins's Dark Sonerts ("I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark not Day," "Carrion Comfort," "No Worst There is None")
The Fall of Nature: "Binsey Poplars" and "Inversnaid"
Rhythm and Meaning in "The Windhover" and "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire"
Sonnet Structure and "Inscape" in "The Windhover" and "The Starlight Night"
Metrics and Language in Hopkins' "The Windhover" and Swinburne's "The Triumph of Time"
Romantic Classicism in Tennyson and Swinburne
To be handed in at our final session on Tuesday December 13th, 2005 at 5:30 p. m.
You should write a six page essay contrasting some aspect of the works of two poets we have studied to show how they represent an important feature of Victorian poetic culture or sensibility, or alternately, different aspects of Victorian poetic taste. If the poets you discuss are from different periods, you should consider whether their different choices reflect shifts in Victorian poetic taste as the century progressed. Your essay, in other words, should comment not only on the poems themselves but how they express thematic concerns or stylistic tastes of their respective periods.
Your essay should include comments on formal features of the poetry you discuss: style, stanzaic form, rhythm, meter and diction.
Poets we have studied have included Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Augusta Webster, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, Algernon Swinburne, Dante G. Rossetti, William Morris, working-class poets Hamilton and Laycock, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oscar Wilde, Amy Levy, W. E. Henley, Michael Field (Edith Cooper and Katherine Bradley), Lionel Johnson, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman and Charlotte Mew.
Topics you might consider for contrast include:
use of imagery, symbols and allegory
use of landscape; themes of nature and the environment
issues of gender/race/sexuality/crime
religious imagery/revisionist uses of faith/issues of belief and doubt
introspection, the divided or alienated self
the oppressions of convention
myth and legend (e. g. Arthurian legend, classical mythology)
fallenness/”original sin”/divided or alienated selves
the possibility of romantic love
issues of fate/social determination
war and conflict
the uses of music/art/history
the meaning of death
evocation of regional differences
parents and children
uses of the dramatic monologue
patterns of the lyric
social hierarchy/issues of class and marginalization
Victorian sonnets (EBB, C and D Rossetti, Webster, Field)
the meditative sequence/Victorian narrative poetry
redemption/human fellowship/alternative societies or ideals
the nature of beauty; the nature of morality