The Victorians

Catalog description

The Victorian era is a rich, diverse period full of contradictory ideologies and cultural changes grouped together by the long reign of Queen Victoria. Students will study this fascinating period of cultural history through texts in every literary genre: poetry, drama, fiction, and prose. The course is a wonderful complement to both ENGL 222 and ENGL 453 and can be organized chronologically or by topics such as faith and doubt; poverty, labor, and the working class; the publication industry; women, gender, and sexuality; Arthurian Romance and Medievalism; Pre-Raphaelitism; imperialism and racism; science and evolutionary thought; and Gothic literature. Students can expect to read popular and canonical texts which may include writers such as Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Darwin, Christina Rossetti, and George Eliot (Marian Evans), among others.