ENGL 397

Fall 2014 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Aug 25-Dec 10

Honors Seminar II

Credit: 3 hours.

Periods in British, American, and Anglophone literature.

May be repeated. Prerequisite: A 3.33 grade-point average or consent of the English Department's Director of Undergraduate Studies. Restricted to English and Rhetoric majors.

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ENGL 397 class schedule data for fall 2014
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	32331	Lecture-Discussion	T	3:30PM -4:45PM	TR	English Building	Saville, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/25/14-12/10/14 Special Approval: Departmental Approval Required Section Title: Soul-Talk & Brit Body-Politic Section Info: Topic Section T: Soul-Talk and the British Body-Politic (1840-1885) In ?Signs of the Times,? his 1829 polemic against the prevalence of utilitarian thought in British society, Thomas Carlyle rages that ?It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws. Thus is the Body-politic more than ever worshipped and tended; but the Soul-politic less than ever? (?Signs of the Times,? 71). Carlyle was not alone in his concerns. Novelists like George Eliot (Middlemarch) and poets like the Brownings used soul-talk to address the spiritual well-being of their own and neighboring European and transatlantic communities as they evolved modern democracies. As we read the work of these and other writers we will consider the merit of Carlyle?s complaint, asking ourselves what ?the soul? actually meant to them. We will consider whether the conceptions of soul in skeptics and atheists like Eliot and Swinburne differ from those of believers. We will also debate the political value of the category today, especially in the light of work by radical political theorists like William E. Connolly and others.