ENGL 537

Spring 2014 All Classes

All Classes

Seminar Victorian Lit

Credit: 4 hours.

May be repeated if topics vary. Prerequisite: A college course devoted entirely to an aspect of Victorian studies or consent of instructor.

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ENGL 537 class schedule data for spring 2014
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	32276	Lecture-Discussion	T	3:00PM -4:50PM	W	123 English Building	Saville, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/14-05/07/14 Section Title: Body-Politic & Soul-Politic Section Info: Topic Section T: Body-Politic and Soul-Politic in Democratizing Britian (1840-1900) In ?Signs of the Times,? his 1829 polemic against utilitarian hedonism and instrumentality, Thomas Carlyle rages against the growing pragmatism of British society: ?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). In the reform era that followed, the focus on extending the franchise, abolishing Corn Laws, expanding education, and improving sanitary conditions intensified until it seemed to Carlyle that morality, creativity and spirituality were withering through neglect. Carlyle was not alone in his concerns. Novelists like George Eliot (Middlemarch), essayists like Oscar Wilde (?The Soul of Man under Socialism?) and above all poets like the Brownings, Swinburne and Whitman 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 (for instance, Plato, Aristotle, Jeremy Bentham, Frederic Harrison), we will interrogate the merit of Carlyle?s complaint, asking ourselves what ?the soul? actually meant to them and why it might be considered the special bailiwick of poets. We will consider whether the conceptions of soul in skeptics and atheists like Eliot, Swinburne, and Whitman 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. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.