Spring 2007 Courses

English 332-01: Two Nations: Poverty and Affluence in Victorian Literature (Çelikkol)

T/TH 1:00-2:30pm, Old Main 003

In 1845, British Prime Minister and novelist Benjamin Disraeli addressed the growing social gap between the rich and the poor in Sybil: "Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings as if they were... inhabitants of different planets." As his emphatic formulation intimates, rapid industrialization and urbanization transformed the social fabric in Victorian Britain (1837-1901).

In this course, we will approach Victorian literature through the lens of the two-nations problem, which transformed formal aspects of literature as well as shaping literary representations of urban life. As we read novels and poems that address class difference, we will ask ourselves questions about form and genre. How did socio-economic heterogeneity mark the development of realism, arguably the most prominent novelistic form in the century? Did the genres of the social-problem and the silver-fork novel reify economic polarization? Could Victorian poets, inheriting a lyrical sensibility from their Romantic predecessors, write about factory soot?

In addition to exploring the ways in which class difference shaped literary history, we will investigate links between the discourses of literature and economics, both of which claimed to remedy social ills. Why did novelists and essayists believe the emergent discipline of economics was ill-equipped to address social injustice? How did they position themselves as key figures in social reconciliation? We will read works by novelists, poets, and essayists such as Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, D. G. Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Anthony Trollope as we pursue these questions.

Students will write several informal response papers, two formal papers, and present their independent research on relevant literary criticism. For English majors, this course counts towards the pre-1900 British literature requirement.

Spring 2007 Course Listings