English 198.01
M-W, 11 am-12:15 pm
Car Barn 316
Victorian Literature: Culture and Anarchy
Nathan K. Hensley
Spring 2012 / Georgetown University
Office Hours: Thursday, 2-3 pm; Friday 10 am-12 pm
nh283@georgetown.edu
316 New North
202-687-5297
Reform Riot in Hyde Park, 1866
This survey course focuses on the literature produced during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901),
that long two-thirds-of-a-century in which England asserted itself as history’s first global democratic
empire, spreading networks of trade, communication, and war to every corner of the earth. The
social challenges that attended this phase of globalization triggered revolutionary developments in
literary practice, renovating the novel, poetry, nonfiction prose, journalism, and drama in turn. As
we sample these diverse forms, we’ll read both recognized monuments of the age (Wuthering
Heights, On Liberty) and those ephemeral or anticanonical texts (King Solomon’s Mines, Swinburne’s
poetry) that testify with surprising eloquence to the unruly creative energy of the era modernism
would later belittle.
As we work against stereotypes of a prim and proper Victorian age, we’ll trace a theme of vital
concern to Victorians themselves: social disorder. We’ll use close readings to see how the specter of
unrest structured debates across a variety of social and literary contexts: the rise of industry, the
widening of democratic representation, the expansion of empire, the birth of realism, “the woman
question.” What we’ll discover, I expect, is that Victorian writing opened new possibilities for
human identity while foreclosing others; modeled alternative modes of being while enforcing the
status quo; institutionalized human liberty while expanding an empire; and invented key aspects of
our administered world while subjecting others, in advance, to dynamic and trenchant critique. Are
we Victorians, after all?
Required Texts:
Please purchase these specific editions from the college bookstore, or online. If you purchase them
online, be sure to note the ISBN number, otherwise you will end up with the wrong edition and
need to buy the text twice.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition, VOLUME E: THE VICTORIAN
AGE (Norton) ISBN 0393927210
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (Oxford World’s Classics) ISBN 0199541892
H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines (Penguin) ISBN 9780141439525
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon (Penguin) ISBN
9780140422504
Optional Texts:
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Writings (Cambridge) ISBN 0521379172 (Please
purchase used only! If only available new, see me!)
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (Cambridge) ISBN 052137796x (Please purchase used
only! If only available new, see me!)
George Eliot, The Lifted Veil & Brother Jacob (Oxford World’s Classics)
ISBN 9780199555055
Additional Readings:
Occasionally, other readings will be posted on our Blackboard site; these are marked on the syllabus
with an asterisk (*). I expect you to print these in hard copy form, read them in hard copy
form, and bring them to class.
Requirements:
Requirements include collaborative thinking, close reading, three short papers, and a take home
exam. Along the way you will also make at least five contributions to the class journal on our
Blackboard site. You’ll also write a short review in the style of a 19th-century periodical. There will
be occasional reading quizzes, generally unannounced, to ensure our progress on the reading.
Participation: This element of the grade measures your contribution to the collective
business of the class. There are many ways to participate, but all of them require diligently
preparing the day’s reading (not skimming it). Participation includes engaging in class
discussions; intelligently listening to same; reading actively, carefully, committedly; coming
prepared with questions; posting relevant questions and comments to our Blackboard site.
You participate when you enable others, not just when you take up airtime. Other matters:
no cell phones; no texting: only you, your peers, and the texts. Please no computers in class.
Note that if you do not have a hard copy of the day’s text with you, you will be asked
to leave class; this will count as an absence.
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Occasional quizzes: Simple, fact-based reading quizzes designed to keep everyone on pace.
These are part of your participation grade.
Three Blackboard incitements. (1-2 pages, normal looking font) These are short, informal
responses to the day’s reading posted to the class Blackboard site. Not formal writing
projects, but proofread. Their content is up to you: as their name suggests, they are designed
to incite discussion. You might, for example, take a passage and perform a close reading of
it, unlocking some particular complexity in the prose we could alight on in class; you might
compare one work with another, framing a question that reaches across our syllabus; or you
might pose questions about some knotty or confusing element in the reading – a
contradiction, a question-- while taking time to thicken that question with thoughtful
reflections from other areas of the course. The key is to put forward an idea, a hunch, an
argument, and be ready to discuss this idea in class. When our numbers stabilize I will divide
the class into groups, e.g. A, B, C, D, E, and the appropriate group will respond on the day
indicated for that group. Note that you will not receive written feedback on these
assignments but I will read them zealously before class.
Two analytical papers. (4-5 pages, normal-looking font.) These are sharp, sustained, and
formal engagements with one or more texts covered in class. I will hand out prompts for
these papers but you are free, always, to break from those strictures and compose your own
questions and topics.
Mid-term and take-home final exams. Open book, open notes, no Googling. Both of
these exams are cumulative assignments designed to allow you to make creative analytic
connections from across the semester. The final will be cumulative, covering the entire
semester. Both exams are designed to ensure sustained critical engagement with our
collective work, so the best way to study is by being engaged throughout the course. You
have 48 hours to complete them, choosing from among a set of essay questions. There may
also be identifications and some short answers.
Course Grading Policy:
Your final grade for this course will reflect the quality of work you produce, but it will also reflect
the quality of your participation in the collaborative labor of the course. Thus, your thoughtful
responses to the texts, your active participation in online and class discussions, and your level of
improvement and sustained effort will all contribute crucially to your final grade. The percentage
breakdown is as follows:
Three Blackboard Responses & Online Participation
Analytical Essay 1
Analytical Essay 2
Mid-Term Exam
Final Take-Home Exam
Participation
10%
13%
15%
17%
25%
20%
Policy on Late Work:
Out of respect for your classmates’ and my own time, being late is strongly discouraged: papers and
other assignments will be penalized the equivalent of one letter grade for each day beyond their due
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date, with the first 24 hour period beginning immediately. Late exams will not be accepted. Please
see me in advance if extraordinary circumstances arise.
Absence and Tardy Policy:
The seminar-style nature of this course makes your presence in class imperative. Your first two
absences, whether excused or unexcused, will not be penalized. Every unexcused absence beyond
the third will result in a 1 percentage point drop in your final grade, i.e. from 91% to 90%. If you
must miss a class session, it’s your responsibility to learn what happened in class and to obtain any
of the materials distributed that day. If you know in advance you’ll miss a day when an assignment is
due, you must arrange with me another, earlier, due date. You are permitted three late arrivals over
the course of the semester. Every two late arrivals after the first three will count as one class
absence.
Plagiarism:
Do not do it, ever. If you do, you will (at the very least) fail the course. See the Georgetown Honor
System website for guidelines about what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it:
http://gervaseprograms.georgetown.edu/honor/system/53377.html. Note that in all matters I
expect you to observe the Georgetown honor pledge: To be honest in every academic endeavor, and to
conduct myself honorably, as a responsible member of the Georgetown community as we live and work together.
Disabilities, Special Conditions, Etc.:
I’m committed to providing whatever it takes to help you be successful in this course. This comes
from the Georgetown Academic Resource Center: “Georgetown does not discriminate or deny
access to an otherwise qualified student with a disability on the basis of disability, and students with
disabilities may be eligible for reasonable accommodations and/or special services in accordance
with the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act (ADAA)
of 2008. However, students are responsible for communicating their needs to the Academic
Resource Center. The University is not responsible for making special accommodations for students
who have not requested an accommodation and adequately documented their disabilities. Also, the
University need not modify programmatic, course, or degree requirements considered to be an
essential requirement of the program of instruction.”
See: http://guarc.georgetown.edu/disability/accommodations/; and please see me early in the term
to discuss how I can help.
Guides for Further Study and Research:
Thinking conceptually about literature is difficult, since it entails showing how minute textual details
reconfigure dilemmas of crucial historical importance. For your research of matters Victorian,
consult the library’s wonderful guide to C19 resources:
http://guides.library.georgetown.edu/content.php?pid=236629&sid=1956184. For matters of
terminology, your first line of defense is the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism,
available through the link above. Second stop is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available
with a Google search. For matters of literary history, consult the Oxford Encyclopedia of British
Literature or the Columbia Guide to British Literature, both of which are available on campus).
Only after that should you bother with Wikipedia. Please stay away from online summaries not
mentioned here. And as always, please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions whatsoever
about this material. We’re in this together, and I’m here to help.
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Victorian Literature: Culture and Anarchy
Course Schedule
[Please note that the calendar is subject to change; I reserve the right to alter readings as our progress dictates. Readings
marked with an asterisk (*) are electronic resources on our Moodle site; NA means Norton Anthology]
Week 1
W, January 11: Introduction. What was the Victorian age? Discussion of the Great Exhibition
Catalog. Eliza Cook, “The Englishman” (NA)
Week 2
M, January 16: NO CLASS: MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY
W, January 18: History: “The Victorian Age: 1830-1901” (NA); “Empire and National Identity”
(NA); What Made the Victorians So Proud?”*; “Queen Victoria’s Little Wars”*; Nonfiction: Prince
Albert, “Speech at the Mansion House, 1850”*; John Ruskin, from “Of Queens Gardens”*; Poetry:
Tennyson, “Ulysses” and “Charge of the Light Brigade” (NA).
Week 3
M, January 23: Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
W, January 25: Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Week 4
M, January 30: Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
W, February 1: Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights; Elizabeth Gaskell, from The Life of Charlotte Bronte*;
Emily Bronte: “No coward soul is mine” (NA), “I’m happiest when most away” (NA)
Week 5
M, February 6: Robert Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover,” “My Last Duchess,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,”
“Love Among the Ruins” (NA) / ANALYTICAL ESSAY 1 DUE
W, February 8: Charles Darwin, all selections from NA; Herbert Spencer, “Progress: Its Law and Its
Causes”*; Robert Browning, “Caliban Upon Setebos”
Week 6
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M, February 13: Tennyson, “Maud: A Monodrama” (NA); and from “In Memoriam A.H.H” (NA)
W, February 15: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” (NA) -- see also
“Poems in Process” section; John Ruskin, on W.M. Turner’s The Slave Ship
Week 7
M, February 20: NO CLASS: PRESIDENT’S DAY
W, February 22: Friedrich Engels, “The Great Towns” (NA); Mayhew, from London Labour and the
London Poor (NA); Annie Besant, “The ‘White Slavery’ of London Match Workers” (NA); Dickens,
from Hard Times (NA)
Week 8
M, February 27: George Eliot, The Lifted Veil; Eliot, “Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt”*
W, February 29: 1857 Indian Mutiny. William Howard Russell, “My Diary in India, In the Year
1858-9 (NA); Mutiny Ballads;* Felice Beato Images*
[MID-TERM EXAM DUE BY EMAIL NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 5 pm]
Week 9
M, March 5: NO CLASS: SPRING BREAK
W, March 7: NO CLASS: SPRING BREAK
Week 10
M, March 12: JS Mill, from On Liberty (NA); Samuel Smiles, from “Self Help”*
W, March 14: Karl Marx, from Capital (1867),* “The Alienation of Labor,”* and The Communist
Manifesto (NA)
Week 11
M, March 19: C.H. Hazlewood, Lady Audley’s Secret*
W, March 21: Matthew Arnold, from Culture and Anarchy*; Arnold, “Lines Written in Kensington
Gardens” and “Dover Beach” (NA)
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Week 12
M, March 26: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, PPT images*; Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “The Blessed
Damozel,” “Soul’s Beauty,” and Body’s Beauty” (NA); Christina Rossetti, “After Death” and “In an
Artist’s Studio” (NA)
W, March 28: Swinburne, Poems and Ballads; and reviews* [Possible visit to Swinburne Archive at
Georgetown Special Collections, details TBD]
Week 13
M, April 2: On “The Woman Question”: Readings in NA; Sarah Grand, “The New Woman and the
Old”*; Coventry Patmore, “The Angel in the House” (NA); revisit your notes from Ruskin, “Of
Queen’s Gardens”*
W, April 4: H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines
Week 14
M, April 9: H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines
W, April 11: H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines
Week 15
M, April 16: H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines / ANALYTICAL ESSAY 2 DUE
W, April 18: John Henry, Cardinal Newman, “Liberalism”*; Gerard Manley Hopkins, selected
poems (NA) and journal entries*
Week 16
M, April 23: Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (NA)
W, April 25: Michael Field, all selections from NA; browse Matthews and Lane, eds., The Yellow
Book*
Week 17
M, April 30: Conclusion: Are we still Victorian? Lytton Strachey, from Eminent Victorians*; Virginia
Woolf, from To the Lighthouse*
TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM DUE MAY 4, NO LATER THAN 5 pm BY EMAIL
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