This course will seek to define the contours of Victorian literature – its obsessions, tensions, particulars, and world views. Since literature reveals the workings of culture, we shall endeavor to create an ongoing conversation on the nature of those workings as we piece together the conversation in which the work itself participates through both in-class discussions and weekly written responses. We will focus on a number of issues that were vitally important to the Victorians and continue to be debated in our own time such as the Woman Question, class conflicts, Crisis of Faith, and degeneracy/decadence.

The goal of this course is encourage an understanding of each individual work within the larger context of English literature and, by doing so, learn how to read poetry, drama, and fiction critically. In order to communicate these interpretations, we will also focus on how to write about literature. Thus the goal in this endeavor is to construct essays that write about these genres in a thoughtful, convincing, and effective manner.

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