8:121 Victorian Poetry
MW Room 208 EPB 5:30-6:45
Instructor: Florence Boos, florence-boos@uiowa.edu
Teaching materials and course website page: www.uiowa.edu/~boosf
Office: 319 EPB: office phone 335-0434
Office hours: before and after most classes; Tuesday 4-5; Friday 4:30-5:30; and by appointment
Textbooks Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry, Concise Edition and Linda Hughes, The Cambridge Introduction to Victorian Poetry, both in IMU.
Exam: Monday May 9th at 5:30 p. m. (students will report on their final paper)
Course Requirements:
1. participation: contributions to class discussion. Please read the assignment before class and come prepared to discuss the poem’s form and content, and ask any questions you may have about unclear passages.
2. participation: from time to time during the course students will be asked to provide background information on one of the authors we read. To prepare, please use biographical sources such as the Dictionary of Literary Biography or a biography (not simply Wikipedia!).
3. participation: ICON. 6 times during the semester by the times indicated on the syllabus, please post an essay equivalent to two typed pages on our space on ICON. Details to follow.
Of the postings, at least one should concern the book arts, based on our trip to Special Collections; one should respond to works of Victorian art, most likely from the Pre-Raphaelite and Morris slides which we view; two should use biographical or critical material from an article or book chapter which discusses the text on which you are commenting, and two should apply some of the observations in Linda Hughes’s The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry to a poem or poems which we read.
4. two essays: In addition to these short essays, 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). A title, bibliography and if possible, an outline should be turned in a week before the first draft is due, as indicated in the syllabus.
If you hand a draft to me one week early, I will be glad to give initial comments and suggestions.
5. The final essay/take-home exam will be a comparative critical discussion of the works of two or more authors/texts you have read during the course.
The final will be held during examination week, most likely Monday May 9th.
Grading: With some variation for special factors and marked improvement, grades will be roughly based on the following scale:
2 papers: 60%
ICON postings 10%
class participation: 30%
Some Possible Paper Topics:
6+ pages, topic and bibliography due Monday February 28th; paper due the 11th. Be sure to consider issues of language and form as well as content.
Language/Silence/Naming in “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point”
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 Effectiveness 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 Abolitionist Poem
Anger, Irony, and Sarcasm in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poetry
E. B. Browning's and Augusta Webster's Portrayals of Social Outcasts
Maternity and Children in the Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Augusta Webster
Browning’s Portrayal of the Artist in “Fra Lippo Lippi”/”Andrea del Sarto”
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
Character or Situation? Identity in the Dramatic Monologues of Robert Browning and Augusta Webster
Unmasking and Suspense in “Porphyria’s Lover”
The Use of History and Myth in Monologues of Tennyson and the Brownings
Rossetti as Painter and Poet: “Jenny” and “Found”
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 /Psychological Exploration
Tempering Judgment with Sympathy: the Dramatic Monologues of Robert Browning and Augusta Webster (could also use EBB, Tennyson)
Rossetti's Illustrations for the Moxon Tennyson
Visual Elements in Tennyson’s Poetry
Tennyson's Reshaping of Classical Myth in "Ulysses" and "The Lotus-Eaters"
Desire and Rest in "Ulysses" and "The Lotus-Eaters"
Patterns of Language, Imagery and Epiphany in Tennyson's "In Memoriam"
Healing in "In Memoriam"
Death and Immortality in "In Memoriam"
Science and Faith in "In Memoriam"
Belief and Unbelief in "In Memoriam"
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
Christina Rossetti’s “In An Artist’s Studio” and Rossetti’s “Jenny” / the Pre-Raphaelite Ideal of Woman
Rhythm and Meaning in Christina Rossetti's Lyrics
Christina Rossetti’s Devotional Poems/ on Sisterhood
The “Fallen Woman” in the Poetry of Rossetti/Christina Rossetti
Victorian Poetry, Final Paper/Exam:
The draft should be ready for our final session on Monday May 9th, 2011 at 5:30 p. m., and the final version handed in by 5 p. m. Friday May 13th.
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 Bamford, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oscar Wilde, Amy Levy, Michael Field (Edith Cooper and Katherine Bradley), Lionel Johnson, Mary Coleridge, 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
art, portraiture, ekphrasis
mirrors, the divided self