Unit information: Victorian Poetry: Belief, Doubt, and Dissent in 2013/14

Unit name	Victorian Poetry: Belief, Doubt, and Dissent
Unit code	ENGL29031
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Dr. Wright
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of English
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit explores the work of a wide range of Victorian poets grappling with issues of doubt and dissent, belief and non-belief, and reports of the death of God. Questions about belief during the nineteenth century came up against provocative and newly-defined divisions in knowledge. Coinciding with central concerns about class, race, and the expression of sexuality, Victorian poets and critics found themselves wondering not only what they could or should believe, but what the nature of belief itself meant for human life. Touching on key debates surrounding Biblical Exegesis and Tractarianism, Darwinism and Natural Theology, and questions about death and the afterlife, the unit will focus on the close analysis of poetry and poetic form, and examine innovative developments in poetic voice, the artistic and social functions of the poet, and poetry as itself an invitation to self-awareness, productive confusion, doubt, retreat, dissent, belief, and praise.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students are expected to

• have a good knowledge of a wide range of Victorian poems and poets
• show understanding of some of the ways in which beliefs (religious, scientific, social, aesthetic) were explored and challenged during the later decades of the nineteenth century
• exercise skill in formalist analysis and demonstrate awareness of both Victorian and recent critical responses to the poems and topics studied.

Teaching Information

1 x 2 hour seminar per week, plus use of consultation hours where desired.

Assessment Information

1 short essay (2000 words max) one-third of unit mark 33.3% 1 long essay (4000 words max) two-thirds of unit mark 66.7% The 2,000 word essay will demonstrate a more limited knowledge of (1) and (2). The 4,000 word essay will demonstrate (1) through (3).

Reading and References

Arthur Hugh Clough, Dipsychus

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Princess, In Memoriam, A. H. H., Maud

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, plus selected poems

Robert Browning, ‘Caliban upon Setebos’, ‘Mr Sludge the Medium’, ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’

Matthew Arnold, ‘Empedocles on Etna: A Dramatic Poem’, ‘Dover Beach’, selected chapters from Culture and Anarchy

George Meredith, Modern Love

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, plus selected poems

James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

Algernon Charles Swinburne, ‘Hymn to Proserpine: After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith’, ‘Anactoria’, ‘Laus Veneris’, ‘Ave Atque Vale: In Memory of Charles Baudelaire’

Gerard Manley Hopkins: ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’, plus selected poems

Thomas Hardy, selected poems