ENGH 335: Prose and Poetry of the Victorian Period

ENGH 335-001: Victorian Poetry and Prose: Nineteenth-Century Sexualities
(Spring 2018)

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM T

Section Information for Spring 2018

This course is primarily an introduction to poetry of the Victorian period, with a focus on constructions of sexuality. Famous for wildly popular love poems, the Victorian period has also earned a reputation for silence on matters of sex.  But in fact, Victorian poetry is characterized by artistic experimentation as well as intimate expression, by bracing realism and witty playfulness as well as romantic reverie and haunting spirituality, by dynamism as well as beauty.  And Victorians were fascinated by questions of sexuality and desire, questions to which the era's poetry often gives voice.  In this course, we'll be learning how to read poetry closely, with attention to poetic form, and we'll be thinking about how poetry responds to the cultural, technological, scientific and political developments of the advent of modernity.  At the same time, in Victorian Britain, including versions of masculinity and femininity same-sex love, desire and transgression, the relationship of body and spirit, eroticism and consumer society.  We will begin with an introduction to a few Romantic poets of the earlier nineteenth century--including Shelley, Keats, and Byron--who became key figures of desire, and key figures for thinking about desire, in the later nineteenth century.  We'll also consider transatlantic exchanges between British and American poetry in the period.

Tags:

Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

Poetry and nonfiction prose by such authors as Carlyle, Arnold, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Ruskin, Mill, and Wilde. Limited to three attempts.
Recommended Prerequisite: Satisfaction of University requirements in 100-level English and in Mason Core literature.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Grading:
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.

The University Catalog is the authoritative source for information on courses. The Schedule of Classes is the authoritative source for information on classes scheduled for this semester. See the Schedule for the most up-to-date information and see Patriot web to register for classes.