ENL 3251 VICTORIAN LITERATURE
Dr. C. Snodgrass; 4336 Turlington; 376-8362 (home) or 278-8362 (cell); snod@english.ufl.edu
 


 

SYLLABUS: READING SCHEDULE


Required Texts:

First Photocopy Supplement, including background materials (Orange and Blue Textbooks)
Alfred Tennyson, Selected Poems(Dover)
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach and Other Poems (Dover)
R. L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde(Dover)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Broadview)
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess and Other Poems (Dover)
A. W. Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (Broadview)
Second Photocopy Supplement, including texts not available elsewhere (Orange and Blue Textbooks)
Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Poems (Dover)
Wilde, Complete Shorter Fiction (Oxford)
Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan (Dover)
Aubrey Beardsley, Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley (Dover)

Schedule:


QUESTIONING GOD, COUNTRY, & CULTURE:

 Week 1
[Packet #1]:
Introduction to the course
“Some Reasons Why Americans Value the British”
“Facts, Themes, and Principles of Victorian Culture”
“A Few of the Dichotomies that Haunted Victorians”
“Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism”
“Choice of Group Topics”
Alfred Lord Tennyson — introductory note on Tennyson; “The Lady of Shalott”

Optional Background Reading:
         Terry Deary, Horrible Histories: The Vile Victorians
         “Chronicle of Some Important Events Bearing on Victorian Age & Aftermath”

Week 2
[Packet #1 & Tennyson  book]
Tennyson — “Ulysses,” “Locksley Hall”; from In Memoriam: poems 4, 5, 34, 41, 54, 55, 56, 57, 108, 124; “Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Vastness”

Week 3
[Packet #1 & Arnold book]
Matthew Arnold — introductory note on Arnold; Poetry: “The Forsaken Merman,“The Buried Life,” “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” “To Marguerite—Continued,” “Dover Beach,” “Self-Deception”; Criticism: “Preface to Poems (1853),” “Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” “Study of Poetry”

Packet #2

Week 4
Robert Louis Stevenson — introductory note on Stevenson; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Week 5
Charlotte Brontë — introductory note on Brontë, Jane Eyre


LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND “THE WOMAN QUESTION”:

Week 6
[Packet #2 & Browning  book]
Robert Browning — introductory note on Browning, “The Last Ride Together,” “The Statue and the Bust,” “Prospice,” “A Woman’s Last Word,” “The Laboratory,” “My Last Duchess,” “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “Andrea Del Sarto,” “An Epistle, from Karshish”

Week 7
First Class Session:  Browning (continued)
Second Class Session & Following:  High Victorian & Pre-Raphaelite Painting (in-class slides and analysis) [see also other images on Snodgrass website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/Texts&Images.htm]:
 Ford Madox Brown, “Take Your Son, Sir!” (1851-92) [unfinished]; Burton, The Wounded Cavalier (1855); Hunt, The Hireling Shepherd (1851),  The Awakening Conscience (1853), The Lady of Shalott (1889-92) [Manchester]; Millais, The Woodman’s Daughter (1951), Mariana (1851); The Blind Girl (1854), Cherry Ripe (1879); Hughes, The Long Engagement (1854-59), April Love (1855-56), Home from the Sea (1856-63), Good Night (1865-66); D. G. Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850) King Arthur’s Tomb (1854), Beata Beatrix (1864-70), The Blessed Damozel (1875-78), La Ghirlandata (1873), Astarte Syriaca (1877); Morris, Queen Guenevere (1858), Burne-Jones, Phyllis and Demophöon (1870); Pan and Psyche (1872-74), The Beguiling of Merlin (1874), Perseus Slaying the Sea Serpent, or Doom Fulfilled (1876-88), The Depths of the Sea (1887); Pygmalion & the Image: The Heart Desires (1868-78), Pygmalion & the Image: The Hand Refrains (1868-78);  Pygmalion & the Image: The Godhead Fires (1868-78); Pygmalion & the Image: The Soul Attains (1868-78); The Annunciation (1879), King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (1884); Simeon Solomon, Study of Sappho (1862) Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864), Night (1896).

Week 8
High Victorian & Pre-Raphaelite Painting (continued): 
Alma-Tadema, In the Tepidarium (1881); Egg, Travelling Companions (1862); Draper, A Water Baby (1900), The Gates of Dawn (1900), Ulysses and the Sirens (1909), Clyties of the Mist (1912), The Kelpie (1913); Dicksee, Harmony (1877), Chivalry (1885), The End of the Quest (1921), La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1902); Leighton, The Fisherman and the Siren (1856-58), Athlete Struggling with a Python 1874-77), Idyll (1880-81), The Bath of Psyche (c. 1890), Perseus and Andromeda (1891-94), The Garden of the Hesperides (c. 1892), Flaming June (1895); Long, The Babylonian Marriage Market (1875), The Chosen Five (1885); Moore, Dreamers (1879-82), A Summer Night (1887-90); Poynter, The Cave of the Storm Nymphs (1903); Sandys, Morgan le Fay (1864); Spencer-Stanhope, Eve Tempted (1877); Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott (1888), The Lady of Shalott Looking for Lancelot (1894), Pandora (1896), Ariadne (1898); Hylas and the Nymphs (1896), Lamia; Collier, Lilith (1887); Godward, The Betrothed (1892), Mischief and Repose (1895), The Delphic Oracle (1899), Expectation (1900), The Mirror or Contemplation (1899).

Other European Artists:
Ingres, La Grande Odalisque (1814), Odalisque with a Slave (1839), The Source (1820–56); Delacroix, Medea (1838); Bouguereau, Le Printemps [The Return of Spring] (1866), Cupidon (1875), Naissance de Vénus [Birth of Venus] (1879), The Abduction of Psyche (1895); Cabanel, Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1897); Courbet, La Source du Monde [The Origin of the World] (1862); Manet, Woman with a Parrot, or Young Lady in 1866 (1866); Nana (1877), Olympia (1863); Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864), Jason (1865), The Poet and the Siren (1894); Renoir, Young Boy with a Cat (1868-69); Schwabe, Medusa (1895), Spleen and Ideal (c. 1907-8); Stuck, Sin (1893), Kiss of the Sphinx (1895); Khnopff, The Caress (1896); Lévy-Dhurmer, Salome Embracing the Severed Head of John the Baptist (1896), Medusa (1897); Rops, La Tentation de St-Antoine [The Temptation of Saint Anthony] (1878), Pornokrates, or La Dame au cochon (1879), Frontispiece for Les Diaboliques by Barbey d’Aurevilly (1886), L’Incantation [Incantation] (1884); and feel free to examine any others.

Week 9
Elizabeth Barrett Browning — Virginia Blaine, “Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)”; “The Lady’s ‘Yes’,” “Bertha in the Lane,” “Loved Once,” “Hiram Powers’ ‘Greek Slave’,” “A Man’s Requirements,” “To George Sand: A Desire,” “To George Sand: A Recognition,” from Songs from the Portuguese: poems 3, 4, 5, 13, 22, 29, 43, and 44
Mathilde Blind — Virginia Blaine, “Mathilde Blind (1841–1896)”; “A Fantasy,” “Scarabaeus Sisyphus,” “Noonday Rest,” “The Russian Student’s Tale,” “A Carnival Episode”               
Graham R. Tomson [Rosamund Marriott Watson] — introductory note on Marriott Watson; Virginia Blaine, “Rosamund Marriott Watson (1860–1911)”; “A Ballad of the Were-Wolf,” “Children of the Mist,” “Epitaph,” “The Cage,” “Nirvana,” “Old Pauline,” “Ballad of the Bird-bride,” “Vespertilia,” “Hic Jacet”
Mary E. Coleridge — introductory note on Mary Elizabeth Coleridge; Virginia Blaine, “Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907)”; “To Memory,” “The Other Side of the Mirror,” “Master and Guest,” “Awake,” “Marriage,” “The Witch,” “Solo,” “I Envy Not the Dead That Rest,” “Mortal Combat,” “Friends — With a Difference,” “The Contents of an Ink Bottle,” “He Knoweth Not That the Dead Are Thine,” “‘True to Myself Am I, And False to All,” “Gone,” “ Unwelcome,” “Impromptu,” “A Clever Woman,” “The White Women”

Week 10
George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne] — introductory note on Egerton; “A Little Gray Glove,” “Wedlock”
Ella D’Arcy — introductory note on D’Arcy; “At Twickenham,” “Irremediable”

Week 11
Arthur Wing Pinero — introductory note on Pinero; The Second Mrs. Tanqueray


LIFE, ART, AND COUNTERCULTURE

Week 12
[Packet #2 & Wilde books]
Oscar Wilde — Introductory notes on Wilde; Criticism: “The Critic As Artist”; Poetry: “Requiescat,” “Vita Nuova,” “Impression du Matin,” “The Grave of Keats,” “Hélas!” “Taedium Vitae,” “[Bittersweet Love],” “The Harlot’s House,” “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”; Fiction: from Complete Shorter Fiction: “The Happy Prince,” “The Nightingale and the Rose,” “The Birthday of the Infanta”

Week 13
Wilde — Lady Windermere’s Fan

Week 14
Aubrey Beardsley — Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 1–22, 62–74, 123–140, 24–39, 40–61, 152–60, 75–107, 114–22, 141–42; and the unexpurgated pictures from Lysistrata in the photocopy packet

Week 15
Beardsley (continued)
—— OPTIONAL EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT(S) DUE ——

—— COMPREHENSIVE FINAL EXAM ——