ENGL 40780 - Literature of the Fin-de-Siecle

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

English

Description:

For Victorians, the end of the nineteenth century was a time of instability, anxiety, as wells as possibility. This period, known as fin-de-siècle, witnessed an explosion in sexual and gender transgression, as embodied by dandies and decadents. This time period was also one where there were great political and economic conflicts in the form of growing labor and socialist movement. The fin-de-siècle also observed the birth of the New Woman who lobbied for sexual, economic, and social equality. And this period also saw the emergence of new aesthetic movement, with its radical philosophy of "art for art's sake". This course will consider a range of literary texts that are representative of the political, cultural and aesthetic innovations that define the fin-de-siècle. These texts will be organized according to the following four thematic sections: 1) Socialism and Labor Politics, 2) the Aesthetic movement, 3) Decadents and Dandies, and 4) the New Woman. We will begin with William Morris's New From Nowhere and then, by section two, move on to poetry by Michael Field and Amy Levy. Our discussions of Oscar Wilde's prose and novel The Picture of Dorian Gray will carry us into section three, where we will also consider prose by Max Beerbohm and Arthur Symons. The course will conclude with Ella Hepworth Dixon's novel, The Story of a Modern Woman as wells as stories by Victoria Cross and Olive Schreiner. Scholarly criticism and selections from Victorian writings will help us to read these texts in response to one another and as situated within their respective historical and cultural contexts. Learning Goals: Students in this course will become aware of the various conventions of genres such as literary realism, utopian fiction, aesthetic poetry, the short story, and prose writing. Students will also learn to recognize how a literary text employs a range of aesthetic, formal, stylistic, and rhetorical strategies, and how these interconnect to make the text and organic whole. A range of assignments and classroom activities provide students with the opportunity to develop these technical and analytical skills. Regular participation, including classroom discussion and four short response papers (2 typed pages maximum), cultivates an environment of on-going and collaborative learning. The group presentation (2-3 students) teaches students to appreciate as well as to assess the claims of literary scholars. The short paper (8-10 pages) gives students an opportunity to draw on these rhetorical skills as they propose their own contextualized interpretation of a text. In the final paper (12 pages), students develop their own researched and critically-informed argument as positioned within an community of literary scholarship. Ideally, students will emerge from this course with an appreciation not only for fin-de-siècle literature but also for the importance of literary practices and strategies within their own daily lives. Course requirements include: regular participation, 2 papers, a presentation, a final exam. Required texts: William Morris's New From Nowhere, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern Woman (Broadview edition), The Fin de Siècle (eds, Ledger and Luckhurst). Additional readings on e-reserves

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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