EN 397

Later Victorian Literature

Critical study of change and resistance in later 19th-century English literature (1860-1900), with some emphasis on writings involved in symptomatic critical and public controversies, from the so-called "fleshly school of poetry" (the PreRaphaelites) to the notorious Decadent Nineties and the trial of Oscar Wilde. The exploration of other literary cultures or communities might include the Aesthetic Movement, the pseudonymous "Michael Field" (a collaboration of two women poets), the cult of sensation fiction, and the increasingly sharp tensions between writers and the "Victorianism" of their public readership and reviewers. Authors often selected for study include Christina and Dante Rossetti, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Wilkie Collins, Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Michael Field" (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper), Lionel Johnson, Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy. Exclusions: EN230*, EN357*.