ENGL4540: Victorian Poetry (50357)

Lootens, Tricia

MWF 5 :20 PM

Park Hall 250


From limericks to dramatic monologues to patriotic ballads; from mythic dream-visions, to hymns, to political polemics; from instantly beloved children's literature to bitter satires and/or catalysts for sexual scandal, this course will explore a wide range of Victorian poetic texts. In considering Victorian controversies over poetics and the uses of poetry, we will read writing by major Victorian theorists as well as texts by a range of poets including Matthew Arnold, Emily Brontë, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lewis Carroll, Toru Dutt, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Augusta Webster, Oscar Wilde, and W. B. Yeats. Readings will be partly negotiated. If student interest is strong enough, we may choose to devote a week or two to a specific line of focus, considering, say, a current debate in Victorian poetic studies; a particular poetic genre or publication venue; an unusually long poetic text; or a non-canonical poet or verse form.