Syllabus for English 151: Fantasy and Realism in Victorian Literature (2003)

Professor Landow (office: 316 Carr; Office hours, 1-1:50, Monday and Wednesday, and by appointment). Class meets 11:00-11:50 am, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, in Carr House 218, 70 Brown Street. Course website: Victorian Web

Week 1 (22 through 27 January). Romantic Visions of Self and Society -- Fictional Autobiography and the Bildungsroman -- Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre (1847).

Week 2 (29 through 31 January) Fantastic Visions of Self and Society-- Lewis Carroll

Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871).

Week 3 (3 through 7 February). George MacDonald -- Fantastic Worlds

Phantastes (1858) -- online text (in VW)

Weeks 4 and 5 (10 through 21 February). Fantasy or Realism -- Charles Dickens as Early Victorian

Pickwick Papers.

Week 6 (24 through 28 February). The Victorian Sage and the Fantastic -- Thomas Carlyle

Reading: "Signs of the Times" (1829) -- on-line text, "Chartism" (1840), "Hudson's Statue" (1851) -- on-line text."

Week 7 (3 through 7 March). Realism in Fiction: The Industrial Novel -- Elizabeth Gaskell

North and South (1855)

Week 8 (10 through 14 March) Past and Present in Robert Browning -- Fantasy or Realism?

"My Last Duchess" (text), "Count Gismond," "Incident of the French Camp," "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," "Porphyria's Lover" (text), "Pictor Ignotus," "The Lost Leader," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb," "The Laboratory," "Love Among the Ruins," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Caliban upon Setebos," "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," "An Epistle," "Any Wife to Any Husband," "Saul," "Cleon" (text),

Major exercise due Monday, 17 March. [Follow for assignment]

Week 9 (17 through 21 March). Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Novel-Poem.

Aurora Leigh (1856)

March 22-30 Saturday through Sunday. Spring recess

Week 10. (31 March through 4 April). The Victorian Sage -- John Ruskin

Unto This Last (1860), "Traffic" (1866), and other writings.

Weeks 11 and 12 (7 through 18 April). Alfred Lord Tennyson -- Romantic to Victorian; or The Poet and Society.

"The Kraken" (1830), "Mariana," "Recollections of the Arabian Nights," "The Lady of Shalott" (text) "The Two Voices," "Oenone," "The Palace of Art" (text), "Supposed Confessions of a Second-Rate Sensitive Mind," "The Lotos Eaters," "Ulysses," "Tithonus," "Locksley Hall," "Break, Break, Break," "Lucretius," "The Voyage of Maeldune," "Tears, Idle Tears," "Crossing the Bar," Selections from Idylls of the King

Week 13 (21 through 26 April) Realism as Fantasy -- Anthony Trollope

The Warden (1875)

Week 14 (28 April through 2 May) Pre-Raphaelite Fantasy and Realism -- Christina and Dante Rossetti; William Morris

All selections in anthology.

Reading period: 3-5 May. Final assignment due day of examinations for courses in this class hour (listed in college catalogue).

Related Resources

Last modified: 10 March 2003