Victorian Literature & the Culture of Industrial Capitalism
English 6640: Nineteenth-Century British Literature
English 5760: Studies in Victorian Literature
 Professor Tamara Ketabgian       Contact information


 

Robert B. Martineau, "The Last Day in the Old Home" (1862), Tate Gallery
In this course we will consider how a number of texts respond to the increasingly urban, industrial, and capitalist face of Victorian culture.  Reading novels in conjunction with nonfiction, poetry, and more recent criticism, we will explore changing notions of self, community, and emotion in British literature from the 1830s to the 1890s.  Readings, lectures, and discussions will emphasize the particularly modern aspects of these works, while paying special attention to conceptions of work, domesticity, spirituality, purity, and culture.  With these concerns in mind, we will explore the ways in which Victorian literature and culture alike sought to channel, contain, or excite the passions of individuals, whether towards romantic, aesthetic, economic, or other, more troubling, ends.

 
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