Dr. Marty Gould, Assistant Professor of English



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English Literature, 1780-1900

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is a survey of British literature of the “long” nineteenth century (1780-1900). Students will be introduced to (or reacquainted with) some of the most significant texts and literary figures of the period. In place of a traditional chronological organization, this semester’s readings have been divided into thematic categories, which represent some (though by no means all) of the nineteenth-century’s more important cultural preoccupations and political developments.

I. The Romantic Frame of Mind
30 August Wednesday	William Blake	"Nurse's Song" and "Nurse's Song"
		"The Lamb" and "The Tyger"
		"Infant Joy" and "Infant Sorrow"
		"The Chimney Sweeper" and "The Chimney Sweeper"
		"The Clod and the Pebble"
		"The Garden of Love"
		"The Sick Rose"
		Images from Songs of Innocence and Experience
6 September Wednesday	Samuel Taylor Coleridge	"Kubla Khan"
		"Frost at Midnight"
		"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
11 September Monday	William Wordsworth	"Tintern Abbey"
		"The Solitary Reaper"
		"Strange Fits of Passion I have Known"
		"She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways"
		"Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
13 September Wednesday	Percy Shelley	"Ozymandias"
		"Mont Blanc"
		"To a Skylark"
		"Ode to the West Wind"
	John Keats	"Ode to a Nightingale"
II. Cultural and Literary Criticism
18 September Monday	Introductory Material	"The Victorian Age "
		"The Age of Reading"
		"The Role of Art in Society"
	John Keats	"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
	John Keats	"Ode on a Grecian Urn"
	Robert Browning	"Fra Lippo Lippi"
20 September Wednesday	Matthew Arnold	"Sweetness and Light"
	Matthew Arnold	"The Scholar Gypsy"
	John Ruskin	from Modern Painters
		from Modern Manufacture and Design
		from The Stones of Venice
25 September Monday	John Ruskin	Continued
	Oscar Wilde	Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
	Walter Pater	from The Renaissance
III. Industrialization, Politics, and Reform
27 September Wednesday	Introductory Material	"The Age of Energy and Invention"
		"The Industrial Catastrophe"
		"The Age of Reform"
		"The Industrial Landscape"
	Percy Shelley	"England in 1819"
	Letitia Elizabeth Landon	"The Factory"
	Caroline Norton	"A Voice from the Factories"
2 October Monday	Charles Dickens	"A Walk in a Workhouse"
2 October Monday	Charles Dickens	A Christmas Carol
4 October Wednesday	Charles Dickens	A Christmas Carol (Continued)
4 October Wednesday	Thomas Carlyle	from Past and Present
IV. Science, Evolution, and Religious Doubt
9 October Monday	Mary Shelley	Frankenstein, Volume I
11 October Wednesday	Mary Shelley	Frankenstein, Volume II
16 October Monday	Mary Shelley	Frankenstein, Volume III
18 October Wednesday	Midterm Exam
23 October Monday	Charles Darwin	from On the Origin of Species
		from The Descent of Man
		from Autobiography
	Thomas Henry Huxley	from Evolution and Ethics
25 October Wednesday	Robert Louis Stevenson	The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
30 October Monday	Robert Louis Stevenson	The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Continued)
	Robert Browning	"Caliban upon Setebos"
	Matthew Arnold	"Dover Beach"
V. Nation and Empire
1 November Wednesday	Introductory Material	"The Age of Empire"
	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	"The Charge of the Light Brigade"
	Thomas Babington Macaulay	"Minute on Indian Education"
	Rudyard Kipling	"The White Man's Burden"
		"Recessional"
		"Without Benefit of Clergy"
6 November Monday	Charles Darwin	"Tierra del Fuego"
6 November Monday	Mary Kinglsey	from Travels in West Africa
VI. Gender and Sexuality
8 November Wednesday	Introductory Material	"The Woman Question"
	Introductory Material	"Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen"
	John Henry, Cardinal Newman	from The Idea of a University
	John Stuart Mill	The Subjection of Women
13 November Monday	Florence Nightingale	Cassandra
15 November Wednesday	Elizabeth Barrett Browning	from Aurora Leigh
	Robert Browning	"Porphyria's Lover"
	Robert Browning	"My Last Duchess"
20 November Monday	Christina Rossetti	"Goblin Market"
22 November Wednesday	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	"Ulysses"
		"Come Down, O Maid"
		"The Woman's Cause is Man's"
		"Mariana"
		"The Lady of Shallott"
27 November Monday	Oscar Wilde	The Importance of Being Earnest
29 November Wednesday	Oscar Wilde	The Importance of Being Earnest (Continued)
4 December Monday	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle	"A Scandal in Bohemia"
VII. Final Exam
4 December Monday		Exam Review
4 December Monday		Final Exam

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