Spring 2006 Courses

English 332: The Victorian Period: Cosmopolitanism in Victorian Literature and Culture (Çelikkol)

T/TH 2:45- 4:15 pm, HUM 213

Charles Dickens’s murderous villain in Little Dorrit declares, “I am a cosmopolitan gentleman.  I own no particular country.  My father was Swiss—Canton de Vaud.  My mother was French by blood, English by birth.  I myself was born in Belgium.  I am a citizen of the world.”  His bold statement alerts us to various issues surrounding cosmopolitan identity in Victorian Britain.  Did the cosmopolitan belong to multiple homelands or none?  What did it mean to be a citizen of the world?  Who claimed to be cosmopolitan and why?       

In this course we will explore literary representations of the cosmopolitan, keeping in mind that this term applies to cities as well as persons.  With its heterogeneous population, for example, London inspired descriptions of urban space as a microcosm of the entire world.  Our class discussions will focus on competing constructions of cosmopolitan identity and the imagination of a worldwide community of human beings.  Reading about hedonistic smugglers, proud industrialists, melancholic expatriates, and wealthy travelers, we will investigate the ways in which cosmopolitanism both reaffirmed and challenged nationhood and imperialism.    

The reading list includes novels and poetry by Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Edward Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and William Morris.  One of the central goals of this course is to contextualize Victorian cosmopolitanism historically, so we will read some eighteenth-century philosophy and contemporary critical theory as well.

Spring 2006 Course Listings