English 322 - Victorian Prose and Poetry

In Tennyson's poetry of sensation, the shocking fictions of Collins and Braddon, and the sensually charged poetry of D.G. Rossetti and Swinburne, literary sensations became a nexus for Victorian anxieties about the embodied effects of literary form. This course investigates how authors deployed sensation in poetry and prose as they drew on emergent scientific discourses on disease and madness, ruptured barriers between high and low cultural forms, and blurred categories of class and gender to question the role of aesthetic labor in Victorian culture. Other readings will include texts by Trollope, Dickens, and James, as well as supplementary readings in literary criticism and theory.

This course is open to Juniors and Seniors. Prereq: 8 credits from English department at the 200- or 300-level