Studies in 19th-Century Literature (359-0-20)

Topic

Victorian Ecologies

Instructors

Govind Ponnuchamy

Meeting Info

Harris Hall L28: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

The nineteenth century in Britain saw the spectacular rise of the novel and the earliest confirmable evidence of environmental decline. Charles Darwin, for example, wrote On The Origin of Species during an era that saw an astronomical rise in fossil-fuel consumption and the ascendence of humans to what scientists have called a geophysical force. This course will study novels from nineteenth-century England that struggled to reconcile a Romantic love for nature with aspirations to master natural environments in the name of social and economic progress. In their descriptions of landscapes and the multifarious entanglements of the human and non-human world, authors like Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy narrate what it means to live in the world while irreversibly destroying it. Using lenses like the environmental humanities, animal studies, and postcolonial studies, this course will dwell in the irony of simultaneously loving and hurting nature. Because this irony characterizes both Victorian and present day postures towards ecology, we will also explore literature helps us make sense of our own feelings of denial and dread towards a rapidly deteriorating environment.

Evaluation Method

Oral presentations, short writing assignments, research essay.

Class Materials (Required)

Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) ISBN: 978-0141439679
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860) ISBN: 978-0141439624
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) ISBN: 978-0141439594
Other materials will be shared on Canvas.

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
SoC Humanities and Fine Arts Distro