ENGL 537

Spring 2023 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Jan 17-May 3

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 spring 2023
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	32276	Lecture-Discussion	E	3:00PM -5:30PM	M	Foreign Languages Building	Courtemanche, E	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/17/23-05/03/23 Section Info: SP23 ENGL 537 Seminar Victorian Lit, Eleanor Courtemanche - TOPIC: The Scandal of Aestheticism: The aesthetic creed of “art for art’s sake,” first codified in an essay by Théophile Gautier, was a bohemian slogan that was considered scandalous in the 19th century. Its rejection of the moral function of art became, by the end of the century, part of a larger movement that questioned inherited categories of virtue, economic productivity, patriotic sacrifice, and traditional gender roles. This class will examine theories of aesthetic autonomy in Victorian and early 20th century British literature, ranging from the lingering importance of Keats and Shelley in the poetic works of Tennyson and the pre-Raphaelites, to Oscar Wilde’s fusion of aristocratic and queer elegance, and Henry James’s theories of the novel. But this class will also consider the fate of the concept of aesthetic autonomy in today’s cultural criticism, in which claims that art is always political sometimes shade over into the assertion that the aesthetic has no independent existence. The idea of a “pure” aestheticism may be as controversial today as it was in 1880. So we may feel it strange that earlier generations fought so hard to liberate art from its cultural and political contexts. Readings may include poetry by Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; selections from John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice; William Morris’s lectures on art and socialism; Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray and “The Artist as Critic”; stories by New Woman aesthetes; materials on the Wilde trial and the 1960 obscenity trial against Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton and “The Art of the Novel”; and critical work by Theodor Adorno, Linda Dowling, Sianne Ngai, Dennis Denisoff, and Dustin Friedman. Restriction(s): Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.