Prof.M.bottez Victorian Literature

Prof.dr.
Monica Bottez
A Course in Victorian Literature and Culture 2010-2011
Second Year of Study, English Major
Aim of the course: to familiarize the students with the main literary productions of the
Victorian Age in relation to their cultural context (previous literary traditions,
philosophical and religious trends).
At the seminars the students with develop their skill of textual analysis and will be
encouraged to do individual research and apply various critical concepts and approaches
they were taught in the first year of studies.
Main topics discussed
I. Queen Victorias reign an age of economic and social reform. Economic
development: industrialization and colonial expansion. Centre and margin in English
society and the British Empire: Orientalism and Occidentalism.
The progressive enfranchisement of the male population; social reforms in the domains of
working and living conditions, public health. The condition of women and their exclusion
from public life.
II. English liberalism, individualism and the doctrine of Utilitarianism: Jeremy
Bentham, John Stuart Mill. Views of history: Thomas Babington Macaulay and Th.
Carlyle.
The Condition of England question- Carlyle. Reactions against economic liberalism
based on laissez faire and Utilitarianism: Chartism, trade unions, emergence of socialist
ideas (Ruskin, William Morris).
III. Reactions against Victorian orthodoxy: communal thinking in the debates
concerning ethics and social harmony (Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin). M.Arnold:
Culture and Anarchy.
Arnolds faith in culture and the liberal model of education( Th. Huxley).
Religious faith in Victorian England: Evangelicalism, the Oxford Movement, Christian
Socialism; the evolutionist theory, positivism, Agnosticism, atheism.
IV.Victorian arts: the medievalism of the neo-Gothis style and of Pre-Raphaelite
painting-Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The priority of the ethic over the aesthetic
judgment:-Ruskin, Arnold. The Arts and Crafts Movement William Morris. The interest
in ancient and Renaissance models; the hedonism and aestheticism of the fin de siecleW.Pater, A.Swinburne, O.Wilde.
V-VI -VII.Victorian Poetry: specific lyrical and epic forms-the dramatic monologue,the
idyll,nonsense verse; postromantic and premodern features,innovation of poetic language
and forms, recurrent themes- A. Tennyson, R. Browning, A. H. Clough, M. Arnold,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, E. Barrett-Browning, A .Swinburne, G.M.
Hopkins, Th. Hardy, R. Kipling.
VIII-XII. The Victorian novel : previous traditions; types of Victorian novels; artistic
creeds.and its aesthetic .
Serial publication and the rhetoric of the Victorian novel hybrids beatween the four
types of prose forms as presented in Fryes classification; Gothic elements in the novels
of Dickens, the Bront sisters, Stevenson, Hardy, Bram Stoker.
Archetypal symbols and fairy-tale patterns (Cinderella, Rapunzel) in novels of identity
formation- Dickens, the Bront sisters, Hardy.
From picaresque narratives to the intellectual novel of George Eliot; her deterministic
vision and psychological analysis.
The representation of class, gender and race, social conventions and manners in the
metropolis, provincial life and rural England.
The use of the fantastic in the allegorical, exotic and utopian novel - Lewis Carroll, R.L.
Stevenson, Samuel Butler, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker.
XIII. Victorian drama between the well-made play and the comedy of manners: Oscar
Wilde; G.B.Shaw and anti-melodrama: The Devils Disciple.
XIV. Conclusion: the late Victorian rejection of high Victorian values..
Assessment:
33% seminar activity- provided you get a pass at the examination paper
66% final examination mark
To be admitted to take the examination you need to have attended 4 (out of the 7)
seminars
Bibliography
Novels
1. Charles Dickens: Bleak House
3. Charlotte Bront : Jane Eyre or.Emily Bront: Wuthering Heights
4. George Eliot :Middlemarch:
5. Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland or S. Butler: Erewhon
6. Th. Hardy: Tess of the DUrbervilles
7. 1 novel from R. L. Stevenson : Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde or O. Wilde: The Picture of
Dorian Gray or Bram Stoker: Dracula
Optional: W. M. Thackeray: Vanity Fair
Poetry
Alfred Tennyson:, The Lady of Shalott, Mariana ; Ulysses, Crossing the Bar,
fom In Memoriam A.H.H.- the poems anthologized in M.Stoiculescu, M.Bottez, A.
Constantinescu: An Anthology of English Literature-The Victorian Age (T.U.B., 1985),
(abbreviated from now on as AELVA
Robert Browning: My Last Duchess, The Last Ride Together, Two in the
Campagna Porphyrias Lover, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came; Fra Lippo
Lippi, The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxeds Church; Prospice, The Ring and
the Book (Introduction)
Matthew Arnold:: In Harmony with Nature; The Buried Life; The Scholar
Gipsy; Lines Written in Kensington Gardens, To Marguerite. Continued,
Philomela, Dover Beach
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: How Do I love Thee, When Our Two Souls
Arthur Hugh Clough The Latest Decalogue, In the Great Metropolis, EpiStraussium
Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Blessed Damozel, Introductory sonnet to The House of
Life, The Woodspurge;
Christina Rossetti :Rest, Echo, Remember. Song;
Gerard Manley Hopkins: Pied Beauty, The Windhover, Binsey Poplars;
Carrion Comfort, No Worst There Is None, Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord
Algernon Charles Swinburne: The Leper, Hymn to Proserpine
Thomas Hardy: Neutral Tones, The Broken Appointment, The Darkling Thrush
Rudyard Kipling: If
Drama
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest
George Bernard Shaw: The Devils Disciple
Prose
Thomas Carlyle : On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History-The Hero as
Poet [Shakespeare] Oxford Anthology of English Literature (OAEL) vol II pp824-837;
Chartism ( A. Cartianu &Stefan Stoenescu:Proz eseistic victorian[PEV], vol I pp103122
John Ruskin: The Stones of Venice . Ch. VI The Nature of Gothic, AELVA pp63-77
John Stuart Mill Bentham (AELVA pp 38-61) or On Liberty (PEV, vol I pp507-534.
Matthew Arnold: Preface to the First Edition of Poems (AELVA pp 79-87);from

Culture and Anarchy-Sweetness and Light; Hellehism and Hebraism (PEV vol IIpp442465;513525; The Study of Poetry (AELVA pp115-123).
Walter Pater: Studies in the History of the Renaissance Preface, Leonardo Da Vinci ,
Conclusion (PEV vol III pp 224-228, 241-260, 324-327
Oscar Wilde The Decay of Lying or The Critic as Artist (AELVA612-642 or 643713)
Optional Critical and Theoretical Bibliography
1. Philip Davis. The Victorians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
2. Boris Ford (gen ed) The Pelican Guide to English Literature Vol 6, Harmondsworth,
1990.
3.. Monica Bottez: Aspects of the Victorian Novel: Recurrent Images in Dickenss Work
Bucuresti:, TUB, 1985
4. Monica Bottez, Analysing Narrative Fiction, E.U.B., 2007
5. The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry ed. by Joseph Bristow. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000
6. The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel ed. by Deirdre David. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001
7. David Lodge. The Art of Fiction. London: Penguin Books, 1992
8. David Lodge (ed.), Modern Criticism and Theory. London and New York,
Longman,1988
9.. Radu Surdulescu, Bogdan Stefanescu, eds: Contemporary Critical Theories.
A Reader. Bucharest-U.B.P., 1998
10. Cuddon, J.A., Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, Penguin, 1992

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What are some of the main topics that will be discussed in the course?

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Matthew Arnold: Preface to the First Edition of Poems (AELVA pp 79-87);from

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