ENL 6256  ISSUES IN VICTORIAN CULTURE: THE WOMAN QUESTION IN THE FIN DE SIÈCLE

COURSE TEXTS (Books available at Goering's Book Center):

Wilde, The Portable Oscar Wilde (Viking-Penguin)
Grant Allen, The Woman Who Did (Oxford)
Beardsley, The Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley (Dover)
Seven (7) photocopy supplements
 

SCHEDULE (subject to modest negotiation):

Week 1
Introduction

Week 2
Walter Pater—“Preface” and “Conclusion” from The Renaissance (1873)
Arthur Symons—“Preface: Being a Word on Behalf of Patchouli” from Silhouettes (1896), Introduction” and “Conclusion” to The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1896–99)
Max Beerbohm—“In Defence of Cosmetics” (1894)
Articles on John Everett Millais by Laurel Bradley and Pamela Tamarkin Reis, from Victorian Studies journal
Oscar Wilde—“The Critic As Artist,” “Preface” to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
[Packets #1 and #2 and Portable Oscar Wilde; c. 175 pages]

Week 3
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: “Souvenirs of an Egoist,” “The Diary of a Successful Man,” “An Orchestral Violin,” “A Case of Conscience,” “Apple Blossom in Brittany,” “The Princess of Dreams”
[Packet #3; c. 160 pages]
——PROJECT SELECTION DUE——

Week 4
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”
Symons—Criticism: “The World as Ballet,” “Music Halls and Ballet Girls,” “Sex and Aversion,” “Lydia”
[Packet #3; c. 80 pages]

Week 5
Nineteenth-Century Erotic Paintings, including High Victorians and the Pre-Raphaelites (slides)
William Michael Rossetti—“The Brotherhood in a Nutshell”
John Ruskin—“Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood” (Letters to the Times), “ . . . absolute, uncompromising truth,” “Pre-Raphaelitism”
[Packet #2; c. 23 pages]
——BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE——

Week 6
Eliza Lynn Linton—“The Girl of the Period” (1868)
George John Romanes—“Mental Differences Between Men and Women” (1887)
Edith Jemima Simcox—“The Capacity of Women” (1887)
Eliza Lynn Linton— “The Wild Women As Social Insurgents” (1891)
Mona Alison Caird—“A Defence of the So-Called Wild Women” (1892)
Sarah Grand—“The New Woman and the Old” (1898)
[Packet #4; c. 75 pages]

Week 7
Karl Pearson—“The Woman’s Question,” from The Ethic of Freethought (1888)
Grant Allen—“Some Plain Words on the Woman Question” (1889)
Mona Alison Caird—“The Morality of Marriage” (1890)
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”]
[Packet #4; c. 75 pages]

Week 8
Grant Allen—The Woman Who Did (1895)
[c.  140 pages]

Week 9
Arthur Wing Pinero—The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1892)
[Packet #2; c. 55 pages]
—— STATEMENT OF THESIS DUE——

Week 10
Victoria Cross [Vivian Cory]—“Theodora, A Fragment” (1895)
Henry Harland—“The Bohemian Girl” (1895), “The Invisible Prince” (1896), “Flower o’ the Clove” (1897), “Merely Players” (1897)
Vernon Lee [Violet Paget]—“Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” (1902)
[Packet #5; c. 230 pages]
——OUTLINE DUE——

Week 11
George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright]—“Wedlock,” “A Cross Line,” “Now Spring Has Come,” “The Little Gray Glove,” “An Empty Frame,” “Virgin Soil”
[Packet #6; c. 155 pages]

Week 12
Ella D'Arcy—“Irremediable,” “The Pleasure-Pilgrim,” “White Magic,” “An Engagement,” “A Marriage,” “At Twickenham,”
[Packet #7; c. 175 pages]
——DRAFT OF TERM PAPER DUE——

Week 13
Mathilde Blind—“A Carnival Episode”
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,” “A Quoi Bon Dire,” “Ne Me Tangito”; Fiction: “Some Ways of Love”
  [Packet #2; c. 40 pages]

Week 14
Oscar Wilde—Salome
Aubrey Beardsley—Salome pictures from Best of Beardsley
[Portable Oscar Wilde, Best of Beardsley, and Packet #; c. 50 pages]

Week 15
Aubrey Beardsley—Best of Beardsley pictures
[Best of Beardsley; c. 100 pictures]

——TERM PAPER DUE——