English 133 - Spring, 2020

19th Century British Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Wander, Ryan
CRN: 84072
Time: TR 1:40-3:00
Location: 212 Veihmeyer

Description

This class considers a host of continuing and new developments in British literature over the course of the Romantic and Victorian periods, including Romanticism and Realism, science fiction and fantasy, and detective fiction and the Gothic. We will read novels, short stories, poetry, and dramatic texts to develop a sense of the aesthetic and intellectual range of nineteenth-century British writing and the kinds of concerns that preoccupied the century?s writers. We will also attend to the cultural and historical context that these texts reflected and shaped, a context informed by industrialization, imperialism, feminism, and Darwinism, among other major currents. As we proceed, we will work to understand these texts? importance in their moment of production, in the larger sweep of literary history, and in our present moment.

Grading

Essay 1: 20%
Essay 2: 25%
Final Exam: 25%
Short At-home Writing Assignments: 15%
Short In-class Writing Assignments, Quizzes, Attendance, and Participation: 15%

Texts

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
The Sign of Four, Arthur Conan Doyle
The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Island of Dr. Moreau, H.G. Wells
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
, Additional readings available on Canvas