ENG 332-01 - The Victorians

4 credits (Spring)

Going to Town: Urbanization and Victorian Literature. Massive and rapid migration to still-developing urban centers during the Victorian period led to decaying rural areas and catastrophically congested cities. Industrialization affected all facets of nineteenth-century life, and we’ll explore a number of them, focusing on class and gender dynamics during this period. We will read a variety of works of fiction and nonfiction including Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, (1852-53) Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1861-62).

Prerequisite: ENG 224 or ENG 225.
Instructor: Jacobson