ENL 6256  ISSUES IN VICTORIAN CULTURE: SEXUAL IDENTITY AND REPRESENTATION IN THE FIN DE SIÈCLE

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Program Status:  This course can be applied toward fulfilling part of the requirements for several possible program “tracks,” including but not limited to the Victorian Studies and Cultural Studies program tracks.

This course will study later Victorian poetry, drama, prose fiction, painting, graphic arts, clothing fashion, and contemporary (Victorian) works of cultural criticism and critical theory, not only for the intrinsic value of the works studied but also as a means of examining the Victorian fin-de-siècle culture’s varying views of gender identity and various representations of sexuality.

The course will treat the works of some of the most prominent and influential late Victorian Decadents, such Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, John Gray, Lionel Johnson, Hubert Crackanthorpe, and Henry Harland.  In addition, a good portion of our time will be spent investigating issues raised by “The Woman Question,” studying in the process the works of notable women fiction writers such as George Egerton, Ella D’Arcy, Ada Leverson, and Victoria Cross, and important (if generally neglected) fin-de-siècle women poets, such as Olive Custance, Michael Field, Mathilde Blind, Rosamund Marriott Watson, Mary E. Coleridge, and Charlotte Mew.

The course will try specifically to organize your efforts around developing tangible professional skills, particularly the production of a publishable professional article.
 

SCHEDULE (subject to modest negotiation)

Week  1
Introduction

Week 2
Walter Pater—“Preface” and “Conclusion” from The Renaissance; “Style”
John Ruskin—from Modern Painters: excerpt from “Of Truth of Space,” “The Naturalist Ideal,” excerpt from “Of the Pathetic Fallacy”
Arthur Symons—“Introduction” and “Conclusion” to The Symbolist Movement in Literature
James McNeill Whistler—“Ten O’Clock Lecture”
Max Beerbohm—“In Defence of Cosmetics”
Ella D’Arcy—“The Death Mask”
Oscar Wilde—“The Decay of Lying,” “The Critic As Artist,” “Preface” to The Picture of Dorian Gray
[Packets #1 & 2 and Portable Oscar Wilde; c. 210 pages]

Week 3
Charles Baudelaire—“Un Voyage à Cythère” [“A Voyage to Cythera”]
John Gray—“On a Picture,” “Poem,” “A Crucifix,” “Parsifal Imitated,” “Femmes Damnées,” “Le Voyage à Cythère,” “Mishka,” “The Barber,” “Charleville”
Lionel Johnson—“The Cultured Faun,” “The Church of a Dream,” “Mystic and Cavalier,” “To a Passionist,” “In Honor of Dorian and His Creator,” “The Destroyer of a Soul,” “The Dark Angel,” “Nihilism,” “A Decadent’s Lyric”
Richard Le Gallienne—“The Décadent to His Soul”
Oscar Wilde—“Hèlas,” “Requiescat,” “Symphony in Yellow,” “The Harlot’s House,” The Picture of Dorian Gray
Aubrey Beardsley—“The Three Musicians,” “Ballad of the Barber,” The Story of Venus & Tannhäuser
[Packet #3 and Portable Oscar Wilde; c. 325 pages]
——PROJECT SELECTION DUE——

Week 4
Nineteenth-Century Erotic Paintings, including High Victorians and the Pre-Raphaelites (slides)
William Michael Rossetti—“The Brotherhood in a Nutshell,” “Notes on Paintings”
Holman Hunt—“The Impact of Ruskin”
Misc. critical reactions: “Controversy and Ideology”
John Ruskin—“Letters to the Times,” “Notes on some Paintings,” “Pre-Raphaelitism”
Articles on John Everett Millais by Laurel Bradley and Pamela Tamarkin Reis, from Victorian Studies journal
[Packet #3; c. 60 pages]
——BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE——

Week 5
Arthur Symons, “Ernest Dowson”
Ernest Dowson—Poetry: “In Preface: For Adelaide,” “Vita summa brevis,” “A Coronal,” “Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration,” “Villanelle of Sunset,” “My Lady April,” “Ad Domnulam Suam,” “Yvonne of Brittany,” “Growth,” “Ad Manus Puellae,” “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae,” “Exile,” “Spleen,” “O Mors! Quam Amara Est Memoria,” “You would have understood me had you waited,” “April Love,” “Vain Hope,” “Vain Resolves,” “A Requiem,” “Terre Promise,” “Villanelle of His Lady’s Treasures,” “The Garden of Shadow,” “Amantium Irae,” “Impenetentia Ultima,” “A Valediction,” “Cease smiling, Dear! a little while be sad,” “Seraphita,” “Epigram,” “Beyond,” “Saint Germaine-en-Laye,” “To His Mistress,” “The Sea-Change,” “Venite Descendamus,” “Transition,” “Exchanges”
Dowson—Fiction: “An Orchestral Violin,” “A Case of Conscience,” “The Statute of Limitations,” “Apple Blossom in Brittany,” “The Eyes of Pride,” “Countess Marie of the Angels,” “The Princess of Dreams”
[Packet #4; c. 130 pages]

Week 6
Arthur Symons—Poetry:  “Eyes,” “Morbidezza,” “Maquillage,” “Impression,” “On Meeting After,” “Emmy,” “Javanese Dancers,” “Prologue: In the Stalls,” “To a  Dancer,” “Renée,” “Nora on the Pavement,” “Violet: Prelude,” “Violet: Air de Ballet,” “Violet: La Mélinite: Moulin Rouge,” “Violet: At the Ambassadeurs,” “Stella Maris,” “Hallucination: I,” “Hallucination: II,” “Flora of the Eden: Antwerp,” “White Heliotrope,” “Nerves,” “Madrigal: I,” “In the Sanctuary at Saronno,” “Bianca: Bianca,” “Bianca: Benedictine,” “Epilogue: Credo”
Symons—Fiction: “Esther Kahn,” “The Death of Peter Waydelin”
Symons—Criticism: “The World as Ballet,” “An Actress in Whitechapel,” “Music Halls and Ballet Girls,” “Sex and Aversion,” “Lydia”
[Packet #4; c. 90 pages]

Week 7
Karl Pearson—“The Woman’s Question,” from The Ethic of Freethought (1888)
George John Romanes—“Mental Differences Between Men and Women” (1887)
Edith Jemima Simcox—“The Capacity of Women” (1887)
Eliza Lynn Linton—“The Girl of the Period” (1868), “The Wild Women As Social Insurgents” (1891)
Mona Alison Caird—“The Morality of Marriage” (1890), “A Defence of the So-Called Wild Women” (1892)
Arthur Pinero—The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1892)
Hubert Crackanthorpe—“Embers” (1894)
Victoria Cross [Vivian Cory]—“Theodora, A Fragment” (1895)
Henry Harland—“The Bohemian Girl” (1895), “P’tit Bleu” (1896), “Cousin Rosalys” (1896)
[Packet #5; c. 300 pages]

Week 8
Sarah Grand—“The New Aspect of the Woman Question” (1894)
Ouida—“The New Woman” (1894) [a response to Grand’s “The New Aspects of the Woman Question”]
Grand—“The New Woman and the Old” (1898)
Grant Allen—“Some Plain Words on the Woman Question,” The Woman Who Did (1895)
Henry Harland—“The Invisible Prince” (1896), “Flower o’ the Clove” (1897), “Merely Players” (1897)
[Packet #6 and the Allen novel; c. 280 pages]

Week 9
George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright]—“A Cross Line,” “Now Spring Has Come,” “The Spell of the White Elf,” “The Little Gray Glove,” “An Empty Frame,” “A Psychological Moment at Three Periods—the Child, the Girl, the Woman,” “Wedlock,” “Virgin Soil”
[Packet #7; c. 240 pages]
—— STATEMENT OF THESIS DUE——

Week 10
Ella D'Arcy—“An Engagement,” “A Marriage,” “At Twickenham,” “The Elegie,” “Irremediable,” “The Pleasure-Pilgrim,” “White Magic”
[Packet #8; c. 200 pages]
——OUTLINE DUE——

Week 11
Olive Custance (Lady Alfred Douglas)—“Peacocks: A Mood,” “The Masquerade,” “Hyacinthus,” “The White Statue,” “Statues,” “Candle-Light,” “Pierrot”
Mathilde Blind—“The Russian Student’s Tale,” “The Mystic’s Vision,” “A Carnival Episode,” “Sonnet,” “A Parting”
Graham R. Thomson [Rosamund Marriott Watson]— “Epitaph,” “Ballad of the Bird-Bride,” “A Ballad of the Were-Wolf,” “Children of the Mist,” “The White Lady,” “The Cage”
Mary E. Coleridge—“‘He knoweth not that the dead are thine,’” “The Other Side of the Mirror,” “A Clever Woman,” “Impromptu,” “Solo,” “‘I envy not the dead that rest,’” “‘True to myself am I, and false to all,’” “Mortal Combat,” “Friends—With a Difference,” “Master and Guest,” “The Witch,” “The Contents of an Ink-bottle,” “The Witches’ Wood,” “A Day-dream,” “Unwelcome,” “The White Women,” “Marriage”
Charlotte Mew—Poetry: “Pécheresse,” “At the Convent Gate,” “The Farmer’s Bride,” “Fame,” “Ken,” “A Quoi Bon Dire,” “On the Asylum Road,” “The Forest Road,” “Not for That City,” “Ne Me Tangito,” “An Ending,” “A Question”
Mew—Fiction: “Passed,” “Some Ways of Love”
[Packet #9; c. 90 pages]

Week 12
Michael Field [Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper]—“From Baudelaire,” “The Poet,” “A Dance of Death,” “La Gioconda,” “A Dying Viper,” “Song” from “The Tragic Mary,” “The Rescue,” “Venus and Mars,” “The Death of Procris,” “The Magdalen,” “A Pen-Drawing of Leda,” “Prologue,” “The Woods Are Still,” “And On My Eyes Dark Sleep By Night,” “‘Maids, not to you my mind doth change,’” “‘Come, Gorgo, put the rug in place,’” “A Portrait,” “‘So jealous of your beauty,’” “‘Love rises up some days,’” “‘Already to mine eyelids’ shore’” “‘A Girl,’” “‘I sing thee with the stock-dove’s throat,’” “‘Unbosoming,’” “‘As two fair vessels side by side,’” “‘It was deep April,’” “Penetration,” “To the Winter Aphrodite,”  “Embalmment,” “Nests in Elms,” “‘I love you with my life,’” “The Mummy Invokes his Soul,” “Ebbtide at Sundown,” “Life Plastic,” “Eros,” “Constancy,” “Your Rose is Dead,” “A Palimpsest,” “Trinity,” “A Picture,” “Across A Gaudy Room,” “L’indifférent”
[Packet #9; c. 50 pages]
——DRAFT OF TERM PAPER DUE——

Week 13
Oscar Wilde—Salome
Aubrey Beardsley—Salome pictures from Best of Beardsley
Arthur Symons—“Aubrey Beardsley,” “Studies in Strange Sins (After Beardsley’s Designs)”
[Portable Oscar Wilde, Best of Beardsley, and Packet #9; c. 70 pages]

Week 14
Aubrey Beardsley—Best of Beardsley pictures (slides/reproductions & discussion)
[Best of Beardsley; c. 100 pictures]

Week 15
Beardsley’s Best of Beardsley pictures (continued)
——TERM PAPER DUE——