EN 396

Mid Victorian Literature

Critical study of significant literary interventions in the cultural formation of Victorian England (1830-1860). In particular we examine the responses of novelists, poets and other writers to emerging issues of social power and conformity, individual liberty, "progress," industrialism, imperialism, gender and class. The literary treatment of these concerns is explored in relation to developments in genre and narrative form, to emerging mass readerships, and to theories of literature as "a criticism of life." Authors often selected for study include Arnold, Alfred Tennyson, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Elizabeth Gaskell, John Ruskin and Charles Dickens. Exclusions: EN230*, EN357*.