ENGL 537

Fall 2015 All Classes

All Classes

Seminar Victorian Lit

SHOW FINAL EXAM SCHEDULE

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 fall 2015
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	30193	Lecture-Discussion	R	1:00PM -2:50PM	R	113 English Building	Saville, J	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/24/15-12/09/15 Section Title: Soul-talk in Britain 1840-1885 Section Info: Topic Section E: Soul-talk in Democratizing Britain (1840-1885) 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). Utilitarian and radical W. J. Fox refused this perspective not simply defending Utilitarians but identifying poetry as the particular discourse through which the soul-politic could be roused. With debates about extending the franchise, conversations arose about how to cultivate an inventive, humane, and vital citizenry. Novelists like Anthony Trollope (The Warden), essayists like Harriet Martineau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Stuart Mill, and Oscar Wilde, and above all poets like the Brownings, Arthur Hugh Clough, A. C. Swinburne and Walt Whitman used ?soul-talk? to address the spiritual well-being of their own and neighboring European and transatlantic communities as they evolved into modern democracies. As we read the work of these and other writers (for instance, Plato, Aristotle, Jeremy Bentham, and Alexander Bain), we will ask ourselves what ?the soul? actually meant to them, how it differed from the idea of moral character, why ?soul-talk? might be considered the special bailiwick of poets, and how it differed from the ?character-talk? of public moralists. We will consider whether the conceptions of soul in skeptics and atheists like 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 political theorists like William E. Connolly, prosody theorists like Simon Jarvis and Joseph P. Phelan, and others. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.