Adventurous Men and Wild Women: Genre, Gender and Geography in Fin-de-Siecle Literature

Catalog description

British Literature from 1880-1916 was dominated by the concept of adventure, stretching across the far reaches of the Empire. Tales of colonial exploration like Treasure Island were meant to help construct imperial geographies and, at the same time, to help conceive imperial masculinities. Even though these were intended for boys, girls found their own adventurous literature that was bound up with renegotiations of gender, geography, and genre. This course will explore the interrelated concepts of imperialism, decadence, and the New Woman in order to understand the ways in which literature helped construct and subvert gender and Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. P: Contemporary Composition; Critical Issues in Human Inquiry course; Ethics; CR: Sr. stdg.