Required Texts:
Deary, Horrible Histories: The Vile Victorians (Photocopy Supplement)
Buckley, ed., Poems of Tennyson (Houghton-Mifflin: Riverside)
R. L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dover)
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess and Other Poems (Dover)

Second Photocopy Supplement, including shorts by George Egerton and Ella D'Arcy, and Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, and Wilde's "The Critic as Artist"

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)
Diane Hacker, ed.,  A Pocket Style Manual, 2nd Edition (St. Martin's)
 

Schedule:
Week 1
Introduction to the course

Background: Victorian Period
Deary, Horrible Histories: The Vile Victorians

Matthew Arnold—“Dover Beach”
Anthony Hecht—“Dover Bitch”
 

CRISIS OF FAITH
Week 1 (continued)
Alfred Lord Tennyson—introductory reading on Tennyson, “The Poet,” “The Lady of Shalott,” “The Palace of Art,” “Ulysses,” “Tithonus,” “Locksley Hall.”

Tennyson—In Memoriam (read with particular care #s Prologue, 1, 2, 4, 5, 16, 30, 35, 38, 41, 45, 54, 55, 56, 57).

Week 2
Tennyson—In Memoriam (read with particular care #s 78, 85, 88, 95, 96, 103, 105, 106, 108, 123, 124, 125, 128, 131); “Vastness.”

Robert Louis Stevenson—The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
 

ROMANTICISM MEETS VICTORIANISM
Week 2 (Continued)
Robert Browning—introductory reading on Browning, “Love Among the Ruins,” “The Last Ride Together,” “Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” “A Woman's Last Word,” “The Statue and the Bust,” “Prospice,” “The Laboratory,” “Abt Vogler,” “Porphyria's Lover,” “My Last Duchess,” “The Bishop Orders His Tomb,” “A Grammarian's Funeral.”
——POEM ANALYSIS DUE——

Week 3
Browning—“Fra Lippo Lippi,” “Andrea Del Sarto,” “An Epistle, from Karshish,” “Caliban Upon Setebos.”

High Victorian & PreRaphaelite Painting (in-class slides and analysis).
——FIRST OPTIONAL EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT DUE——
 

THE WOMAN QUESTION
Week 4
George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne]—“Wedlock,” “A Little Gray Glove.”

Ella D’Arcy—“At Twickenham,” “Irremediable.”

Arthur Wing Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.
 

AESTHETICISM AN THE DECADENCE
Week 5
Oscar Wilde—Introduction, “The Critic As Artist,” “Requiescat,” “Vita Nuova,”
“Impression du Matin,” “The Grave of Keats,” “Hélas!”  “Taedium Vitae,” “[Bittersweet Love],”
“The Harlot’s House,” “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”

Wilde—from Complete Shorter Fiction: “The Happy Prince,” “The Nightingale and the Rose,”
“The Birthday of the Infanta,” “The Fisherman and His Soul,” “The Star-Child.”

Wilde—Lady Windermere’s Fan.
 ——TERM PAPER DUE——

Week 6
Aubrey Beardsley—Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley.
 ——SECOND OPTIONAL EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT DUE——
 

COMPREHENSIVE FINAL EXAM