Nineteenth-Century British Literature
ENG 5513-001
Spring 2011
Dr. Lopez
W 5:30-8:15
HSS 3.04.10
Office: MB 2.478
Hours: M/W 1:00-2:00; W 4:15-5:15
Debbielopez8@netzero.com
(and by appointment)
Content and Goals: In this survey of Romantic and Victorian literature, students will have the
opportunity to discuss arguments regarding the British slave trade; read poetry by male and
female Romantic poets; and study novels by Romantic novelists Jane Austen and Mary Shelley.
The course also studies the Victorian debates concerning industrialism, as represented, for
example, by Macaulay and Engels, and as addressed in Dickens’ Hard Times. The “Woman
Question” and its relation to Britain’s Reform Bills will be explored through Bronte’s Jane Eyre
and Eliot’s Middlemarch. We will conclude by looking at cultural anxieties, via Braddon’s Lady
Audley’s Secret and Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Texts: Abrams, Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2 (8th ed.); Austen, Northanger
Abbey (any edition); M. Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret; Bronte, Jane Eyre (Norton; Eliot,
Middlemarch (Penguin); Shelley, Frankenstein (Bedford); Stoker, Dracula (Penguin)
Percentages: 20% class participation
20% individual class report on the history, music, art, science, or socio-political context of the
literary work assigned for that day. Students should feel free to use audio-visual components.
A three page summary must be submitted on the day of the presentation. One group
presentation on Middlemarch.
40% one 17-20 page researched paper
20% one 8-9 page conference paper (which may be in preparation toward your longer paper)
Reading Schedule:
1/12
Introduction
1/19 Wollstonecraft’s own “Intro.” To Vindication of The Rights of Woman; Blake, “There is
No Natural Religion (a and b)” and from Innocence—“The Chimney Sweep,” “The Little Black
Boy”; Norton, “The Romantic Period”
1/26
Norton selections from A. Radcliffe; Northanger Abbey
2/2
Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” “Tintern Abbey,” “Preface,” “Michael”;
Keats, “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” “Lamia”; Coleridge, “Christabel”
2/9
Frankenstein
2/16
cont., and begin Jane Eyre
2/23
cont. Jane Eyre; C. Rossetti, “Goblin Market,” “In an Artist’s Studio”
3/2
Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott,” “Ulysses,” “Tithonus”; R. Browning, “My Last Duchess,”
“Fra Lippo Lippi,’’ “Andrea del Sarto”
3/9
Norton, “Evolution””; Middlemarch
3/16
no class
3/23
Norton, “Industrialism”; Middlemarch
3/30
cont., and Norton, “The Woman Question”
4/6
Lady Audley’s Secret
4/13
cont., and begin Dracula
4/20
cont.
4/27
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest