ENL 3251 VICTORIAN LITERATURE
Dr. C. Snodgrass; 4336 Turlington; 376-8362; snod@english.ufl.edu
© Chris Snodgrass 2010
SYLLABUS: READING SCHEDULE
REQUIRED TEXTS (books available at Orange & Blue Textbooks):
First Photocopy Supplement, including poems and essays not included elsewhere (Note: purchase
at Orange and Blue Textbooks)
Alfred Tennyson, Selected Poems (Dover)
Matthew Arnold poems (free download: http://www.poemhunter.com/matthew-arnold/)
R. L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dover)
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess and Other Poems (Dover)
A. W. Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (Broadview)
Second Photocopy Supplement, including texts not available elsewhere (note: purchase at Orange
and Blue Textbooks)
Aubrey Beardsley, Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley (Dover)
Wilde, Complete Shorter Fiction (Oxford)
Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan (free download: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/790)
SCHEDULE
QUESTIONING GOD, COUNTRY, & CULTURE:
Week 1
Introduction
Background: Victorian Period
―Some Reasons Why Americans Value the British‖
―Facts, Themes, and Principles of Victorian Culture‖
―A Few of the Dichotomies that Haunted Victorians‖
―Chronicle of Some Important Events Bearing on
Victorian Age & Aftermath‖
―Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism‖
―Choice of Group Topics‖
Week 2
Alfred Lord Tennyson — introductory note on Tennyson;
―The Lotus Eaters,‖ ―The Lady of Shalott,‖ ―Ulysses,‖
―Locksley Hall,‖ ―[Tears, idle tears],‖ ―Tithonus‖;
introductory note on In Memoriam; from In
Memoriam: poems 4, 5, 34, 41, 54, 55, 56, 57, 108,
124; ―Charge of the Light Brigade,‖ ―Vastness.‖
A. Tennyson 1857
Week 3
Matthew Arnold — introductory note on Arnold
Poetry: ―The Forsaken Merman,‖ ―To Marguerite,‖ ―To
Marguerite— Continued,‖ ―The Buried Life,‖ ―Dover
Beach,‖ ―The Scholar Gypsy,‖ ―Self-Deception,‖
―Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse‖
Criticism: ―Preface to Poems (1853),‖ excerpts from ―Study
of Poetry‖
M. Arnold 1883
Week 4
Robert Louis Stevenson — introductory note on Stevenson; The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND “THE WOMAN QUESTION”:
Week 5
Robert Browning — introductory reading on Browning,
―The Last Ride Together,‖ ―The Statue and the
Bust,‖ ―Prospice,‖ ―A Woman‘s Last Word,‖ ―The
Laboratory,‖ ―My Last Duchess,‖ ―Porphyria‘s
Lover,‖ ―Abt Vogler‖ ―The Bishop Orders His
Tomb,‖ ―Fra Lippo Lippi,‖ ―An Epistle, from
Karshish‖
R. Browning 1865
Week 6
Group Presentation on the Brownings’ Relationship (Tuesday, February 8)
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
First Class Period:
Robert Browning (continued) — ―Andrea Del Sarto‖
Elizabeth Barrett Browning — Virginia Blaine, ―Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(1806–1861)‖; ―The Lady‘s ‗Yes‘,‖ ―Bertha in the Lane,‖ ―Loved Once,‖
―Hiram Powers‘ ‗Greek Slave‘,‖ ―A Man‘s Requirements‖; from Songs
from the Portuguese: poems 3, 4, 5, 13, 22, 29, 43, and 44.
Second Class Period: George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne] — introductory
note on Egerton, ―A Little Gray Glove‖
Week 7
George Egerton and Ella D’Arcy
Introduction Note on the ―New Woman‖
George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne] — introductory
note on Egerton, ―A Little Gray Glove,‖ ―Wedlock‖
Ella D’Arcy — introductory note on D‘Arcy, ―At
Twickenham,‖ ―Irremediable‖
George Egerton
D‘Arcy, c. 1894
Week 8
Group Presentation on New Woman (Tuesday, February 22)
Arthur Wing Pinero — introductory note on Pinero, The
Second Mrs. Tanqueray
Arthur Wing Pinero
Week 9
Group Presentation on Victorian Painting (Tuesday, March 1)
High Victorian & Pre-Raphaelite Painting (in-class slides and analysis,
click indicated links and others on Snodgrass website:
http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/3251_S11syllabus.pdf):
William Shakespeare Burton, The Wounded Cavalier
(1855); William Holman Hunt, The Hireling Shepherd
(1851), The Awakening Conscience (1853), The Lady of
Shalott (1889–92); John Everett Millais, The Woodman’s
Daughter (1951), Mariana (1851), Cherry Ripe (1879);
Hughes, April Love (1855–56); Edwin Long, The
H. Hunt 1865
Babylonian Marriage Market (1875); Dante Gabriel
Rossetti 1863
Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), King Arthur’s Tomb (1854), The
Blessed Damozel (1875–78) [Fogg Art Museum Harvard], Astarte Syriaca
(1877); William Morris, Queen Guinevere (1857); Edward Burne-Jones,
Phyllis and Demophöon (1870), The Beguiling of Merlin (1874), Perseus
Slaying the Sea Serpent, or Doom Fulfilled (1876–88), The Depths of the
Sea (1887), The Depths of the Sea (2nd version), Pygmalion &
the Image: The Heart Desires (1868-78), Pygmalion & the
Image: The Hand Refrains (1868–78), King Cophetua and the
Beggar Maid (1884); Frederick Sandys, Morgan le Fay (1864);
John Spencer Stanhope, Eve Tempted (1877); Laurence AlmaBurne-Jones ‘74
Tadema, In the Tepidarium (1881); Herbert Draper, The Gates
of Dawn (1900), Ulysses and the Sirens (1909), Clyties of the
Alma-Tadema 1876
Mist (1912); Frank Dicksee, La Belle Dame Sans Merci
(1902); Fredric Leighton, The Fisherman and the Siren (185658), Athlete Struggling with a Python (1874-77), The Bath of
Psyche (c. 1890), Perseus and Andromeda (1891-94), Flaming
June (1895); Edward Poynter, The Cave of the Storm Nymphs
(1903); John Waterhouse, Pandora (1896), Ariadne (1898),
Hylas and the Nymphs (1896), Lamia (1905); John Collier,
Lilith (1887); John William Godward, The Delphic Oracle
J. Waterhouse
F. Leighton 1888
(1898);
Other European Artists:
William Bouguereau, Le Printemps [The Return of Spring] (1866), Cupidon
(1875), Naissance de Vénus [Birth of Venus] (1879); Alexandre Cabanal,
Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1897); Edouard
Manet, Olympia (1863), Woman with a Parrot, or Young Lady in 1866
(1866); Nana (1877); Auguste Renoir, Young Boy with a Cat (1868-69);
Carlos Schwabe, Medusa (1895), Franz von Stuck, Sin (1893), Kiss of the
Sphinx (1895); Félicien Rops, La Tentation de St-Antoine [The Temptation
of Saint Anthony] (1878), Pornokrates, or La Dame au cochon (1879); and
feel free to examine any others.
Week 10
Spring Break, No Class
Week 11
Group Presentation on Ghost stories or gothic legends underlying
Tomson/Watson’s poetry (Tuesday, March 15)
Graham R. Tomson [Rosamund Marriott Watson] — introductory note
on Marriott Watson; Virginia Blaine, ―Rosamund Marriott Watson (1860–
1911)‖; ―A Ballad of the Were-Wolf,‖ ―Children of the Mist,‖ ―Epitaph,‖
―The Cage,‖ ―Nirvana,‖ ―Old Pauline,‖ ―Ballad of the Bird-bride,‖
―Vespertilia,‖ ―Hic Jacet‖
LIFE, ART, AND COUNTERCULTURE:
Week 12
Aubrey Beardsley — Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 1–74.
Week 13
Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde
First Class Period: Beardsley (continued) — Best Works of
Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 75–107, 114–60; the
unexpurgated pictures from Lysistrata in the
photocopy packet.
Second Class Period:
Oscar Wilde — introductory notes on Wilde
Criticism: ―The Critic as Artist‖
A. Beardsley 1894
Week 14
Oscar Wilde
First Class Period: Wilde (continued) —
Group Presentation on Wilde’s Fairy Tales (Tuesday, April 5)
Fiction: from Complete Shorter Fiction: ―The Happy
Prince,‖ ―The Nightingale and the Rose,‖ ―The
Fisherman and his Soul‖
Second Class Period: Wilde, Complete Shorter Fiction
(continued)
OPTIONAL EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT(S) DUE
Week 15
Oscar Wilde (continued) — Lady Windermere’s Fan
Week 16
Oscar Wilde (continued) — Lady Windermere’s Fan (continued)
Review
COMPREHENSIVE FINAL EXAM
Black Cape,
Salome
Self-Portrait
Propert
Bookplate
BRIEF LIST OF POSSIBLE SECONDARY READINGS
GENERAL BACKGROUND
Walter Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind
D. C. Somervell, English Thought in the Nineteenth Century
Morse Peckham, Beyond the Tragic Vision
Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death
Georges Bataille, Death and Sensuality
Oscar Wilde 1894
John R. Reed, Victorian Conventions
Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew
Julia Prewitt Brown, A Reader’s Guide to the Nineteenth-Century English Novel
Michael Mason, The Making of Victorian Sexuality
Roy Porter & Lesley Hall, The Facts of Life: . . . Sexual Knowledge in Britain
Sally Mitchell, Daily Life in Victorian England
Victorian Web, http://ernie.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Victorian.html
QUESTIONING GOD, COUNTRY, AND CULTURE
J. Hillis Miller, The Disappearance of God
Robert Bernard Martin, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart (biography)
Dwight Culler, The Poetry of Tennyson
James R. Kincaid, Tennyson’s Major Poems
David Shaw, Tennyson’s Style
Park Honan, Matthew Arnold: A Life (biography)
Dwight Culler, Imaginative Reason: The Poetry of Matthew Arnold
John Pick, Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poet and Priest (biography)
Daniel A. Harris, Unbidden Inspirations: The “Terrible Sonnets” of Hopkins
Frank McLynn, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography
Vedder and Hirsch, eds., Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde After One Hundred Years
LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND “THE WOMAN QUESTION”
Irvine & Honan, The Book, the Ring, & the Poet: A Biography of Robert Browning
Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience (Browning)
W. David Shaw, The Dialectical Temper (Browning)
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconography
Timothy Hilton, The Pre-Raphaelites
David Sonstroem, Rossetti and the Fair Lady
Jan Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood (biographies)
Gay Daly, Pre-Raphaelites in Love (biographies)
Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Problem Pictures: Women and Men in Victorian Painting
Linda Nead, Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain
Helena Michie, The Flesh Made Word: Female Figures and Women’s Bodies
Patricia Marks, Bicycles, Bangs, and Bloomers
Sally Mitchell, The New Girl
Sally Ledger, The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle
Nina Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth
Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-siècle
Culture
Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal
Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic
Pamela Gilbert, Disease, Desire, and the Body in Victorian Women’s Popular Novels
Elizabeth Langland, Nobody’s Angels: Middle-Class Women . . . in Victorian Culture
Cynthia Russett, Sexual Science
Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady
Rita S. Kranidis, Subversive Discourse: . . . Late-Victorian Feminist Novels
LIFE, ART, AND COUNTERCULTURE
John A. Lester, Jr., Journey Through Despair
Holbrook Jackson, The Eighteen Nineties
Gail Marshall, ed, The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle
Richard Dellamora, Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism
Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault
E. Chamberlin and S. Gilman, eds, Degeneration
Stephen Arata, Fictions of Loss in the Fin de Siècle
John Stokes, In the Nineties
Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde: A Biography
Gary Schmidgall, The Stranger Wilde (biography)
Epifanio San Juan, Jr., The Art of Oscar Wilde
Regenia Gagnier, Idylls of the Marketplace: Wilde and the Victorian Public
Matthew Sturgis, Aubrey Beardsley (biography)
Ian Fletcher, Aubrey Beardsley
Chris Snodgrass, Aubrey Beardsley, Dandy of the Grotesque
MISCELLANEOUS OTHER TOPICS
James B. Twitchell, The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature
Alistair Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen’s Novels
Deirdre David, Rule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian Writing
Edward Said, Orientalism