8:104 Literature and Culture of the Victorian Period

Syllabus

January 18th
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January 23rd introduction/metrics (Tennyson, “The Kraken,” D. G. Rossetti, “Silent Noon”)

January 25th Alfred Tennyson, “The Lady of Shallot,” “Morte d’ Arthur”
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January 30th working-class autobiographies

February 1st Charles Dickens, Hard Times
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February 6th Hard Times

February 8th Pre-Raphaelite slides
3 page essay due--summarizing and commenting on one of the Victorian essays on poetry in the back of the Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry; or a chapter from John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty”
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February 13th Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Blessed Damozel,” sonnets from “The House of Life,”--“Willowwood,” “A Superscription,” “The One Hope”; Christina Rossetti, “In An Artist’s Studio”

February 15th William Morris, “The Haystack in the Floods”; Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess,” “Childe Roland”
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February 20th Robert Browning, “By the Fire-Side,” “Abt Vogeler”

February 22nd John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

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February 27th John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

March 1st George Eliot, Middlemarch, book 1
tenative topic + bibliography for first paper due (bibliography should contain 5 non-internet, non-encyclopedia articles and books; some should be from after 1980)
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March 6th trip to Special Collections in Main Library

March 8th Middlemarch, books 2 and 3
paper outline, thesis statement and draft of paper due
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spring break
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March 20th Middlemarch, books 4 and 5

March 22nd Middlemarch, books 6 and 7

first longer paper due
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March 27th Middlemarch, book 8

March 29th Rudyard Kipling, selected poems
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April 3rd Rudyard Kipling, Kim

April 5th Rudyard Kipling, Kim
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April 10th Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”

April 12th Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Wreck of the Deutschland"
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April 17th William Morris and the decorative arts (slides)

April 19th William Morris, News from Nowhere (first 13 chapters)
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April 24th News from Nowhere, illustrated

April 26th News from Nowhere, chapters 14-32
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May 2nd short stories, George Egerton, "Gone Under"; Margaret Oliphant, “The Open Door”
exam precis

May 4th Oscar Wilde, "The Sphinx"; Mary Coleridge, "The Other Side of th Mirror"; R. M. Watson, "The Ballad of the Were-Wolf"
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May 10th exam (take-home essay + class summary)