English 351, Spring 2003 Professor Bigelow
MW 3:00-4:30 Palmer 208 bigelow@rhodes.edu
Off. Hrs. TTH 11:20-12-50 & by appt. H: 728-4958
Off: Palmer 310, x3744
Victorian Poetry and Prose
Every period in European history or the history of the Americas can be said in some way to be a
direct ancestor of our own. But while every period can make some claim of this kind, the
nineteenth century can in a more powerful and far-reaching way be seen as the creator of the
present. The pervasive influence of the industrial system of production and relatively rapid global
transport, the economy of commodities and consumers it created, the instability of social systems
based on such an economy—all these elements of life in the twenty-first century were new in the
period 1837-1901, Victoria’s reign and the period we consider in this course.
In response to and alongside huge changes in the shape of human life, nineteenth century people
invented ways of coping, ways of thinking about themselves and other people, that helped things
make a tiny bit of sense. These strategies for coping with modernity (a good word for summing
up the weirdness of what was new in the nineteenth century) include a different sense of “the
self,” of human subjectivity; a changing set of ideas about gender and sexuality; a set of
positions—for and against—the new industrial economy; a set of positions about global relations,
about England’s “identity” as a nation and the meaning of its conquest of a worldwide chain of
colonies. These concepts and strategies, in many ways, still form the foundation of the dominant
cultures in Europe and the U.S. I don’t mean that everyone believes now the same things people
believed 150 years ago. There’s rarely any one unified “Victorian” belief on a given issue anyway.
Rather, we inherited assumptions, concepts, norms, which are the tools of contemporary action
and analysis.
Concepts and strategies like these aren’t created overnight; they emerge with a kind of geologic
slowness, layer on layer, out of all manner of cultural discourse: journalism, professional and
academic writing, political reportage, and literature. To highlight particularly sensitive ideas in
British cultures in this era, I’ve grouped prose texts into four clusters, each considering a
particular topic. Around these clusters, we will survey the work of 5 poets. Not every issue in the
prose clusters will illuminate every poem we read, but the context of these prose readings will
help us see how poems speak to, respond to, create, or theorize common, everyday questions in
different form.
Course Texts:
William E. Buckler, ed. - The Major Victorian Poets: Tennyson, Browning, Arnold
John Stuart Mill – Autobiography
A rather large course reader, available at the bookstore
Course Requirements:
Readings: To prepare readings for class, whether prose selections or poetry, make some note of
passages or ideas or formal features that you’re interested in or have questions about. It's your
responsibility to raise questions you're interested in, and to direct our discussion to issues you feel
are important.
