Studies in 19th-Century Literature (359-0-20)
Topic
Victorian Art and Activism, 1850-1900
Instructors
Mary E Finn
Meeting Info
University Hall 312: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM
Overview of class
The Victorian period may be as famous for its long novels as for its long-living queen, but many of the liveliest works created in the mid to late nineteenth century took forms other than the novel. And many of these works displayed a feisty engagement with or challenge to the monarchical "brand" of Queen Victoria. Examples of works we will read in this course are: George Eliot's 1856 essay on the Greek play Antigone, which dramatizes the tragic collision between individual and state; Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (1862), a wild anti-fairy tale about female desire and the dangers of yielding to it; the exuberantly profane appreciations of sacred art in Walter Pater's The Renaissance (1873); The Phantom Lover (1886), a phantasmagoric novella about ancestral murder (maybe?) by Vernon Lee; News from Nowhere (1890), a socialist utopian fiction by William Morris; and a play with a satirical take on a Biblical story, Oscar Wilde's Salomé (1896). We will read essays and study photographs and paintings that address the concerns of the day from prostitution to sanitation, and study writers and artists on the frontline of anti-imperialist and anti-slavery activism.
Class Attributes
Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area