Professor Landow (office: 338 Carr House; e-mail: george@landow.com); office hours: 11.00-11:50, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Class meets in Wilson 302 10-10:50 AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in Classweb: Victorian Web
Writing assignments
Note: Check this on-line reading list at the beginning of each week since assignments may change or be reordered.
Week 1 (21-23 January) — Introduction to the Course: Madmen — Different Ways of Being Crazy
Robert Browning, "Porphyria's Lover" (text) and "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" (text); Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Lucretius" and "St. Simeon Stylites;" Lord Dunsany, "The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap" (text). [Discussion questions on Dunsany]
Week 2 (25-29 January) — Madwomen
Readings: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Sitemap — Full text in VW — Discussion questions)
Week 3 (2-6 February) — Mystics
Readings: Browning, "Rabbi Ben Ezra" (Gutenberg text); Tennyson, brief selections from In Memoriam (Sections 2, 5, 7, 14, 22, 50, 54-56, 69, 95, 131 (all available at this San Franciso State U. site; "The Coming of Arthur" (text) and "The Holy Grail" (from The Idylls of the King).
Week 4 (9-13 February) — Mystics
Readings: George MacDonald's Phantastes (E-text in VW — Discussions)
Weeks 5 & 6 (23-27 February and 2-6 March) — Monsters
Great Expectations (Discussions — Full text (outside this site).Week 7 (9-13 March) — Monsters
Reading: Tennyson, "The Kraken." Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market; Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess and "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed's";" Lord Dunsany, "Distressing Tale of Thangobrind The Jeweller," "The House of the Sphinx," "Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon Of Romance," "The Hoard of the Gibbelins," "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles," and "Chu-Bu and Sheemish."
Week 8 — Monsters
Reading: Lewis Carroll, The Alice Books. (Discussions)
[Spring recess 21-29 March]
Week 9 (30 March-3 April). — Prophets
Reading and specific works: Carlyle, "Signs of the Times" (text); the chapter on symbols from Sartor; "The Amphibious Pope and the Seven-foot Hat" from Past and Present; Rossetti, "The Burden of Nineveh" "The Woodspurge;" Troy Town," "Mary's Girlhood" and "The Passover in the Holy Family." Landow, "The Genre of Sage-Writing (or Secular Prophecy);" recommended additional reading: relevant sections of Elegant Jeremiahs.
Note: a new kind of weekly assignment instead of the usual question sets.
Weeks 10 (6-9 April) — Perverts
A. C. Swinburne. Sex and Politics, Sexual Politics: Reading: "Laus Veneris," "The Triumph of Time," "Dolores," , "Anactoria," and Dirae [text], "Before a Crucifix" [text], " "A Foresaken Garden," "Evening on the Broads" [text], "By the North Sea" [text]. . Discussion questions.
Reading:
Week 11 (13-17 April) — Prophets
Reading: Ruskin, "Traffic," Modern Painters, Volume 1, chapters "On the Truth of Color" and "On the Truth of Water" (at U.of Lancaster, UK), Unto This Last (available from Project Gutenberg). Discussion questions.
Week 12 (20-24 April). — Perverts as Prophets: the Aesthetes and Decadents (1)
Reading: Parodying sage-writng or creating a new form of it? Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying" (a list of discussion questions follows the main text); Max Beerbohm, "A Defence of Cosmetics and "Diminuendo." — Discussion Questions
Suggested additional materials (mostly for fun):
Aubrey Beardsley; Max Beerbohm, Rossetti and His Circle (caricatures); Sidney Sime
Week 13 (27 April-1 May). — Perverts: the Aesthetes, Decadents, and Anti-Decadents (2)
Reading: Introduction to the Aesthetes, Decadents, and Symbolists. Ernest Dowson, "Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration" [text] and "Extreme Unction" [text]; Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying," "Les Ballons ," "The Harlot's House ," "Helas! ," "Impression du Matin," "Pan — Double Villanelle ," "The Sphinx ," "Symphony In Yellow."
An Anti-Decadent: W. E. Henley's In Hospital.
Assignments
Weekly discussion questions. The course relies heavily on student-centered discussion generated by the weekly writing assignments. These reading and discussion question have several required parts:
- Choose a substantial passage of 1-3 paragraphs or stanzas when discussing a literary text; choose a single work when discussing a painting, drawing, or example of decorative art;
- Create a graceful and effective introduction to the material you chose that suggests why the reader should want to follow you as you examine it closely;
- Follow the quoted passage with at least one paragraph of commentary.
- Ask 4-5 questions, chiefly concerning matters of technique and comparison to other works, for which you do not have to have answers. As the semester progresses at least one question should involve a comparison of the painting or poem or other text you discuss with one read in a previous week.
- Provide a title for your question set and include your expected graduating class.
[These exercises, which help everyone both keep up with the reading and participate easiy in class discussions, will take different forms in different weeks, sometimes appearing in the Victorian Web itslf, at other times in a Brown-based WIKI. Neither will require any but the most basic experience of computers (i.e., using the WWW and word-prcessing).]
These exercises, which provide the basis of class discussion, should generally be e-mailed to me no later than 6 pm Sunday before we begin discussing the reading, though you can also occasionally send them in Monday or Tuesday. (You can skip a single set of questions during the semester, and we may not have one the final week of classes.) Follow for an the first question set to arrive this term.
Some Easy Ways to Strengthen Your Writing
- Ways to Avoid To Be and Passive Constructions
- Avoid stringing together clumps of abstract nouns with prepositions
- Vary Sentence Structure
Mechanical Matters — Punctuation and Diction
- Punctuation Matters and Matters of Punctuation
- Some Common Errors of Diction
- Symbols used in correcting essays
Books Ordered
The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory. Ed. Thomas J. Collins & Vivienne J. Rundle.
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Broadview paperback (this edition has a lot of valuable extra material).
Carroll, Lewis. The Alice Books. Norton Critical Edition.
George MacDonald. Phantatstes. Eerdmans paperback
Last modified 15 April 2009