Connections: Seminars: Old Syllabi: Victorians S04

Thursday, August 28

First day: Introductions and course outline

Tuesday, September 2

Germaine de Staël, Corinne, or Italy, 5-155
- Stael.org is by far the best place on the Internet for looking into Staël's life and career. The drawback (for some readers) is that it's in French.
- Here is a brief biography of Staël with links to contextual information. (This comes from the publicly available section of the Penn CD-ROM edition of Frankenstein.)

Group I Response: This novel works partly by building analogies between personal and political relationships. Discuss one or more ways that issues of nationality or politics affect issues we would normally think of as novelistically personal in the reading for today.

Note: here and throughout this syllabus, the first (less indented) reading or link is required, while the second (more indented) reading or link is supplemental and optional. Here, for example, the reading from Corinne is required, whereas exploring the websites is optional.

Thursday, September 4

Staël, Corinne, or Italy, 156-263

Group II Response: Using any moment or passage from Group I's responses as a jumping-off point, extend the issues we discussed for Tuesday into the readings for today.

Tuesday, September 9

Staël, Corinne, or Italy, 264-404

Group III Response: open response.

Thursday, September 11

Ellen Moers, from Literary Women
Katie Trumpener, "National Character, Nationalist Plots: National Tale and Historical Novel in the Age of Waverley, 1806-1830," ELH, Vol. 60, No. 3. (Autumn, 1993)

Group IV Response: open response. You might (but need not) consider the way Corinne does or does not fit into the scheme that Trumpener develops, since Trumpener says little directly about the novel.

Tuesday, September 16

Walter Scott, Waverley, 33-99
- The Walter Scott Digital Archive from the University of Edinburgh
- A Victorian perspective: Thomas Carlyle On Sir Walter Scott, 1838

Group I Response: Waverley is routinely called the first historical novel. (Some critics dispute that claim, but don't let that trouble you for the moment.) Keeping in mind the idea that Scott is writing more or less a new sort of book, look for ways in which he engages his readers in the process of making sense of its genre. You might consider what explicit statements Scott makes about other genres, the way he creates one or more personae for the "author" in the text, or how he apologizes for certain features of the text.

Thursday, September 18

Scott, Waverley, 100-195

Group II Response: open response.

Tuesday, September 23

Scott, Waverley, 195-347

Group III Response: Use this response to return to our initial concern with Corinne, the interaction between personal and political plots and how each affects the other's meaning. Choose a specific focus within that broad field for the response.

Thursday, September 25

Scott, Waverley, 347-450

Group IV Response: Using any moment or passage from Group III's responses as a jumping-off point, extend the issues we discussed for Tuesday into the readings for today.

Tuesday, September 30

Scott, Waverley, 451-494
Ian Duncan, "The Romance of Subjection: Scott's Waverley," in Modern Romance and Transformations of the Novel: The Gothic, Scott, Dickens

Group I Response: open response.

Thursday, October 2

This will be the first class dedicated to preparing for the process of researching your final papers. Each of you will annotate one critical work on the readings to date and post the annotation on the discussion board. Then we will discuss the annotations in class.

Tuesday, October 7

Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (handout)
Tricia Lootens, "Receiving the Legend, Rethinking the Writer: Letitia Landon and the Poetess Tradition" in Romanticism and Women Poets, ed. Behrendt and Linkin.
- Here is the only thorough site devoted to LEL.

Group II Response: Discuss some aspect of the relationship between Landon's poem and Corinne.

Thursday, October 9

Landon, "A History of the Lyre"
Linda Peterson, "Rewriting A History of the Lyre: Letitia Landon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the (Re)Construction of the Nineteenth-Century Woman Poet," in Women's Poetry, Late Romantic to Late Victorian: Gender and Genre, 1830-1900, ed. Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain
Daniel Reiss, "Laetitia Landon and the Dawn of English Post-Romanticism," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 36, No. 4, Nineteenth Century. (Autumn, 1996)

Group III Response: open response.

Tuesday, October 14

Selections from Felicia Hemans and Hannah More (handout)
- Nan Sweet, a scholar who does excellent work on Hemans, has put a chronology and a bibliography online.
- Another prominent Hemans scholar (Hemansian?), Susan Wolfson, has recently completed an excellent edition of Hemans's work, and you can see the useful introduction here.
- Putting the Reader Right: Reassessing Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts, by Julia Saunders in Romanticism on the Net

Group IV Response: open response.

Thursday, October 16

Angela Leighton, chapter one of Victorian Women Poets: Writing against the Heart
Susan Wolfson, "Felicia Hemans and the Revolving Doors of Reception," in Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception, ed. Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt

Group I Response: Discuss one of the critical pieces as a literary text. That is, what strategies does it use to engage its audience? How does it create characters (using other texts or scholars) and present the author's voice in conversation with those characters? Are there particular maneuvers you admire or resist?

FALL BREAK

Tuesday, October 28

Selections from Elizabeth Barrett Browning (handout)

Group II Response: open response.

Thursday, October 30

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Book I, Chapters 1-8
- The Eliot site on The Victorian Web
- An Eliot photograph archive
- An Eliot country walking tour

I'm going to ask each of you to trace the development of a certain kind of imagery or metaphor through the novel. As you read this first section, make notes on Eliot's language, thinking of patterns you might like to follow. I'll have ideas, too, and we'll assign areas of concentration in class.

Tuesday, November 4

Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, through Book III, Chapter 7

Group III Response: open response.

Thursday, November 6

Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, through Book V, Chapter 7 (end of Volume II)

Group IV Response: open response.

Tuesday, November 11

Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, through the end

Group I Response: open response.

Thursday, November 13

Library day! Details to be announced.

Tuesday, November 18

Kathryn Hughes, chapter ten of George Eliot: The Last Victorian
Nina Auerbach, "The Rise of the Fallen Woman," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 35, No. 1. (Jun., 1980)

Group II Response: open response.

Thursday, November 20

This will be a day of gathering sources and sharing information; I will announce details as the day approaches.

Tuesday, November 25

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Mariana," "The Lady of Shalott," and "The Palace of Art"
- The Victorian Web page
- An online exhibit from the University of South Carolina
- The web edition of James R. Kinkaid's Tennyson's Major Poems: The Comic and Ironic Patterns

Group III Response: open response.

Wednesday, November 26th

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE BY 5:00

THANKSGIVING BREAK

Tuesday, December 2

Tennyson, Maud: A Monodrama

Group IV Response: open response.

Thursday, December 4

Tennyson, The Princess

Group I Response: open response.

Tuesday, December 9

In-class film: A Room with a View

No assignment: work on those papers!

Thursday, December 11

Last day of class: wrapping up, last questions, inflating the official class balloon for the big term paper parade.

Wednesday, December 17

FINAL PAPER DUE BY NOON

Textbook Poetry Fiction Film Theory Contexts Research and Writing Research Writing Courses Tutorial 120 121 224 226 Seminars Romantics Syllabus Assignments Policies Old Syllabi Victorians S04 Romantics F04 Romantics F06 18th Century F07 Victorians S08 Ulysses F09 Victorians F10 Romantics S11 Ulysses S12 Site Information Site Updates Navigation Site Map	Syllabus for English 332: The Victorians (Spring 2004) Thursday, August 28 First day: Introductions and course outline Tuesday, September 2 Germaine de Staël, Corinne, or Italy, 5-155 Stael.org is by far the best place on the Internet for looking into Staël's life and career. The drawback (for some readers) is that it's in French. Here is a brief biography of Staël with links to contextual information. (This comes from the publicly available section of the Penn CD-ROM edition of Frankenstein.) Group I Response: This novel works partly by building analogies between personal and political relationships. Discuss one or more ways that issues of nationality or politics affect issues we would normally think of as novelistically personal in the reading for today. Note: here and throughout this syllabus, the first (less indented) reading or link is required, while the second (more indented) reading or link is supplemental and optional. Here, for example, the reading from Corinne is required, whereas exploring the websites is optional. Thursday, September 4 Staël, Corinne, or Italy, 156-263 Group II Response: Using any moment or passage from Group I's responses as a jumping-off point, extend the issues we discussed for Tuesday into the readings for today. Tuesday, September 9 Staël, Corinne, or Italy, 264-404 Group III Response: open response. Thursday, September 11 Ellen Moers, from Literary Women Katie Trumpener, "National Character, Nationalist Plots: National Tale and Historical Novel in the Age of Waverley, 1806-1830," ELH, Vol. 60, No. 3. (Autumn, 1993) Group IV Response: open response. You might (but need not) consider the way Corinne does or does not fit into the scheme that Trumpener develops, since Trumpener says little directly about the novel. Tuesday, September 16 Walter Scott, Waverley, 33-99 The Walter Scott Digital Archive from the University of Edinburgh A Victorian perspective: Thomas Carlyle On Sir Walter Scott, 1838 Group I Response: Waverley is routinely called the first historical novel. (Some critics dispute that claim, but don't let that trouble you for the moment.) Keeping in mind the idea that Scott is writing more or less a new sort of book, look for ways in which he engages his readers in the process of making sense of its genre. You might consider what explicit statements Scott makes about other genres, the way he creates one or more personae for the "author" in the text, or how he apologizes for certain features of the text. Thursday, September 18 Scott, Waverley, 100-195 Group II Response: open response. Tuesday, September 23 Scott, Waverley, 195-347 Group III Response: Use this response to return to our initial concern with Corinne, the interaction between personal and political plots and how each affects the other's meaning. Choose a specific focus within that broad field for the response. Thursday, September 25 Scott, Waverley, 347-450 Group IV Response: Using any moment or passage from Group III's responses as a jumping-off point, extend the issues we discussed for Tuesday into the readings for today. Tuesday, September 30 Scott, Waverley, 451-494 Ian Duncan, "The Romance of Subjection: Scott's Waverley," in Modern Romance and Transformations of the Novel: The Gothic, Scott, Dickens Group I Response: open response. Thursday, October 2 This will be the first class dedicated to preparing for the process of researching your final papers. Each of you will annotate one critical work on the readings to date and post the annotation on the discussion board. Then we will discuss the annotations in class. Tuesday, October 7 Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (handout) Tricia Lootens, "Receiving the Legend, Rethinking the Writer: Letitia Landon and the Poetess Tradition" in Romanticism and Women Poets, ed. Behrendt and Linkin. Here is the only thorough site devoted to LEL. Group II Response: Discuss some aspect of the relationship between Landon's poem and Corinne. Thursday, October 9 Landon, "A History of the Lyre" Linda Peterson, "Rewriting A History of the Lyre: Letitia Landon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the (Re)Construction of the Nineteenth-Century Woman Poet," in Women's Poetry, Late Romantic to Late Victorian: Gender and Genre, 1830-1900, ed. Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain Daniel Reiss, "Laetitia Landon and the Dawn of English Post-Romanticism," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 36, No. 4, Nineteenth Century. (Autumn, 1996) Group III Response: open response. Tuesday, October 14 Selections from Felicia Hemans and Hannah More (handout) Nan Sweet, a scholar who does excellent work on Hemans, has put a chronology and a bibliography online. Another prominent Hemans scholar (Hemansian?), Susan Wolfson, has recently completed an excellent edition of Hemans's work, and you can see the useful introduction here. Putting the Reader Right: Reassessing Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts, by Julia Saunders in Romanticism on the Net Group IV Response: open response. Thursday, October 16 Angela Leighton, chapter one of Victorian Women Poets: Writing against the Heart Susan Wolfson, "Felicia Hemans and the Revolving Doors of Reception," in Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception, ed. Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt Group I Response: Discuss one of the critical pieces as a literary text. That is, what strategies does it use to engage its audience? How does it create characters (using other texts or scholars) and present the author's voice in conversation with those characters? Are there particular maneuvers you admire or resist? FALL BREAK Tuesday, October 28 Selections from Elizabeth Barrett Browning (handout) Group II Response: open response. Thursday, October 30 George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Book I, Chapters 1-8 The Eliot site on The Victorian Web An Eliot photograph archive An Eliot country walking tour I'm going to ask each of you to trace the development of a certain kind of imagery or metaphor through the novel. As you read this first section, make notes on Eliot's language, thinking of patterns you might like to follow. I'll have ideas, too, and we'll assign areas of concentration in class. Tuesday, November 4 Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, through Book III, Chapter 7 Group III Response: open response. Thursday, November 6 Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, through Book V, Chapter 7 (end of Volume II) Group IV Response: open response. Tuesday, November 11 Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, through the end Group I Response: open response. Thursday, November 13 Library day! Details to be announced. Tuesday, November 18 Kathryn Hughes, chapter ten of George Eliot: The Last Victorian Nina Auerbach, "The Rise of the Fallen Woman," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 35, No. 1. (Jun., 1980) Group II Response: open response. Thursday, November 20 This will be a day of gathering sources and sharing information; I will announce details as the day approaches. Tuesday, November 25 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Mariana," "The Lady of Shalott," and "The Palace of Art" The Victorian Web page An online exhibit from the University of South Carolina The web edition of James R. Kinkaid's Tennyson's Major Poems: The Comic and Ironic Patterns Group III Response: open response. Wednesday, November 26th ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE BY 5:00 THANKSGIVING BREAK Tuesday, December 2 Tennyson, Maud: A Monodrama Group IV Response: open response. Thursday, December 4 Tennyson, The Princess Group I Response: open response. Tuesday, December 9 In-class film: A Room with a View No assignment: work on those papers! Thursday, December 11 Last day of class: wrapping up, last questions, inflating the official class balloon for the big term paper parade. Wednesday, December 17 FINAL PAPER DUE BY NOON
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