Title: THE VICTORIAN AGE

PRQ:

We will read and analyze, carefully, a variety of works by a variety of Victorian novelists, essayists, and poets.  Students will become familiar with some of the major issues preoccupying these writers, especially issues having to do with these writers’ sense of their own unique historical character.  The course will also serve as an introduction to what has come to be called “cultural inquiry,” a kind of inquiry seeking to disclose aspects of Victorian culture that its poets and sages have tended to idealize, ignore, or occlude.

Five (5) or more Reading Quizzes: short-answer questions and identifications (10%);  Two (2) six- to eight-page analytical papers (50%);  A Midterm Examination (15%);  A Final Examination (20%);  Participation (5%).

1. M. H. Abrams, et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Victorian Age: Volume 2b, 7th Ed. (New York: Norton, 2000).;  2. Richard Altick, Victorian People and Ideas: A Companion for the Modern Reader of Victorian Literature (New York: Norton, 1980).;  3. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (London: Penguin, 1965).