Victorian Literature

The Victorian Period witnessed the novel's heroic attempts to depict the whole of modern society's complexity as well as poetry's struggle to come to grips with industrialized landscapes and imperial aspirations. In this course we will read works by the era's preeminent novelists-the Brontës, Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy-and those by such major poets as Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and Christina Rossetti. We will pay special attention to our various authors' efforts to make literature relevant and revelatory in a time of swift and sometimes frightening social and intellectual innovation. 3 hrs. lect.