EN2D5/EN3D5 Ends and Beginnings: Late 19th- and Early 20th-century Literature and Culture
2021-22 Students:
The Talis AspireLink opens in a new window reading list now has the updated reading list and links to many of the primary and secondary readings for 2021/22.
This module fulfills the pre-1900 and Global Literature departmental requirements.
Module Convenor: Dr Ross G. Forman (H5.39)
r.g.forman@warwick.ac.uk
Module Convenor's Office Hours:
Tuesdays, 4-5 (in person, H5.39)
Wednesdays, 11-12 (via Teams). Please sign up here to make an appointment on MS Teams for the Wednesday office hoursLink opens in a new window.
THERE IS CURRENTLY NO MOODLE BEING USED FOR THIS MODULE.
Overview
This module will introduce students to the literature and culture of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Among the topics we will broach are New Woman literature, Decadence and Aestheticism, slum fiction, empire at the fin de siècle, and, to some extent, the birth of cinema. The fin-de-siècle and early twentieth century were a time of enormous technological, political, social, and cultural change, and we will see how literature manifested and participated in these changes, participating in movements such as suffragism and anti-imperial agitation and helping to construct new notions of modernity.
Outline Syllabus
The module is organized around overlapping thematic units. In Term 1, we consider London as/and the global city. We start with the growth of suburbia. We will consider ‘Slum Literature’ and look at the impact of Jewish and Asian immigration on urban Britain through writers such as Israel Zangwill and Behramji Malabari. We will also do some comparative work, looking at Stephen Crane's New York and Machado de Asss's Rio de Janeiro. In Term 2, we will focus on ‘Gender and Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle.’ Among the topics discussed will be the New Woman and suffrage, the invention of ‘homosexuality,’ the rise of psychopathology and neurasthenia, gender and the British Empire, Aestheticism and the Decadence, the Arts and Craft Movement, and fin-de-siècle drama.
Syllabus for 2021/22:
Most secondary readings and many primary readings will be available via the Library's Talis AspireLink opens in a new window.
Please note that some of the core texts can be downloaded for free from the Internet ArchiveLink opens in a new window portal.
TERM 1
UNIT 1: LONDON AND/AS THE GLOBAL CITY
Week 1:
Introduction
Week 2:
George and Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody (1892)
Required Critical Reading:
Matthew Taunton, "Suburbia" at https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/suburbia#footnote3
Charles Masterman, Chapter 3, "The Suburbans" of The Condition of England (1909)
Week 3:
Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)
plus "George's Mother"(1896)
Required Critical Reading:
Andrew Lawson, "Class Mimicry in Stephen Crane's City," American Literary History 16.4 (2004): 596-618.
Jacob Riis, "The Down Town Back-Alleys" in How the Other Half Lives (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890): 28-47.
Week 4:
Arthur Morrison, A Child of the Jago (1896) [Oxford World's Classics or Broadview editions highly recommended because slang is otherwise difficult to understand.]
Required Critical Reading:
Sarah Wise, "Telling Tales" in The Blackest Streets.
Week 5:
A Comparative Perspective
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro (1899) (Library Latin America Edition Only)*
**PLEASE MAKE SURE TO BUY ONLY THE TRANSLATION BY JOHN GLEDSON OR THE ONLINE VERSION WITH HIS TRANSLATION (VIA TALIS ASPIRE).
Required Critical Reading:
João Cezar de Castro Rocha, "The Shipwreck of Illusions," Chapter 1 in Machado de Assis: Towards a Poetics of Emulation (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2015) 1-44.
Week 6: READING WEEK
Week 7:
London and the Experience of Immigration
G. Paramaswaram Pillai, Letters 1 and 2 of London and Paris through Indian Spectacles (1897)
Behramji Malabari, Chapter 3, "Life as Seen at Home," in The Indian Eye on English Life (1893)
SOSEKI Natsume, "Letter from London" (1901) in The Tower of London: Tales of Victorian London
Israel Zangwill, Selections from Children of the Ghetto (1892): "Proem"; "The Bread of Affliction"; "The Sweater"; "Seder Night"; "Notes."
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Henry Nevinson, "Sissero's Return" in Working Class Stories of the 1890sJoseph Salter, Chapter IX, "Central Africans" in The East in the West (1896).
Required Critical Reading:
Caroline Bressey, "The City of Others: Photographs from the City of London Asylum Archive." https://19.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/1661/
Antoinette Burton, "Making a Spectacle of Empire: Indian Travellers in Fin-de-Siècle London."
Recommended Reading:
Jessica R. Valdez, "How to Write Yiddish in English, or Israel Zangwill and Multilingualism in Children of the Ghetto.
Meri-Jane Rochelson, "Language, Gender, and Ethnic Anxiety in Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto."
Antoinette Burton, Chapter 4, "A 'Pilgrim Reformer' at the Heart of the Empire Behramji Malabari in Late-Victorian London" in At the Heart of Empire.
Week 8:
Focus on London Entertainment and Food Cultures
Required Reading:
Rohan McWilliam, Chapter 13: "Eating Out" in London's West End: Creating the Pleasure district, 1800-1914.
Rachel Teukolsky, Chapter 6: "Decadence" in Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media.
Ross G. Forman, "'Nothing Corresponding to It in China: Asian Food at London's International Health Exhibition, 1884." Food, Culture, and Society 24.2 (2021): 202-226.
Brenda Assael, Chapter 5: "Gastro-Cosmopolitanism and the Restaurant" in The London Restaurant, 1840-1914.
Recommended Reading:
Judith Walkowitz, Chapter 1: "Cosmopolitan Soho" in Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London.
Stefano Evangelista, Chapter 1: "Introduction. The Small World of the Fin de Siecle" in Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siècle.
Week 9:
Amy Levy, The Romance of a Shop (1888) [Broadview edition, ed. Susan Bernstein, recommended for its notes. The Talis Aspire reading list has links to the Project Gutenberg, archive.org, and Library of Congress digital editions.]
Required Critical Reading:
Kate Flint, 'Photographic Memory,' Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 53 (2009),http://www.erudit.org/revue/ravon/2009/v/n53/029898ar.html
Recommended Critical Reading:
Elizabeth F. Evans, "We Are Photographers, Not Mountebanks!": Spectacle, Commercial Space, and the New Public Woman," Amy Levy: Critical Essays, ed. Naomi Hetherington and Nadia Valman (Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2010) 2-46. Link opens in a new window
Week 10:
Richard Marsh, The Beetle (1897)
Required Critical Reading:
Thomas M. Stuart, "Out of Time: Queer Temporality and Eugenic Monstrosity." Victorian Studies 60.2 (2018): 218-227.
Recommended Critical Reading:
Anna Maria Jones, "Conservation of Energy, Individual Agency, and Gothic Terror in Richard Marsh's The Beetle, or, What's Scarier than an Ancient, Evil, Shape-Shifting Bug?"
Ailise Bulfin, "The Fiction of Gothic Egypt and British Imperial Paranoia."
TERM 2:
GENDER AND SEXUALITY AT THE FIN DE SIECLE
READINGS FOR THIS TERM ARE BEING REVISED, AND THE ORDER FOR THOSE RETAINED FROM BELOW IS ALSO CHANGING.
Week 1:
Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts (1881)
George Bernard Shaw, Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893)
Required Critical Reading:
Shaw, from The Quintessence of Ibsenism (section on Ghosts [82-92] and 'The Morals of the Play' [122-134) Link opens in a new window
Week 2:
Selected Stories from Daughters of Decadence, ed. Elaine Showalter:
Vernon Lee, "Lady Tal"
Charlotte Mew, "A White Night"
George Egerton, "A Cross Line"
Ada Leverson, "Suggestion"
Olive Schreiner, "The Buddhist Priest’s Wife"
Selected stories from Nineteenth-century Short Stories by Women: A Routledge Anthology:
Cornelia Sorabji, "Urmi: The Story of a Queen" (pages 275-280)
Flora Annie Steel, "Amor Vincit Omnia" (pages 411-422)
Week 3:
Kate Chopin, The Awakening.
Required Critical Reading:
Ann Heillman, "The Awakening and New Woman Fiction" in The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin 87-104.
Week 4:
Joseph Jeffrey Walters, Guanya Pau: A Story of an African Princess (1891) [Broadview Edition Highly Recommended].
PLEASE MAKE SURE TO HAVE THE COMPLETE TEXT AND THE BROADVIEW EDITION, AS SOME PRINT-ON-DEMAND VERSIONS ARE INCOMPLETE. ALSO, YOU WILL WANT BROADVIEW'S CRITICAL EDITION, AS THE NOTES ARE EXTREMELY HELPFUL TO UNDERSTAND THE NOVEL.
Required Critical Reading:
Introduction, Broadview Edition.
Recommended Critical Reading:
Gareth Griffiths, from African Literatures in English: East and West 63-66.
Week 5:
Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career (1901)
Required Critical Reading:
Tanya Dalziell, "Colonial Displacements: Another Look at Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career," ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 35.3-4 (2004): 39-56.
Week 6: READING WEEK
Week 7:
Queer Histories
Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis" and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" in De Profundis and Other Writings, ed. Colm Toibin.
Frederick Rolfe, The Venice Letters (Selections) Link opens in a new window
Jack Saul, The Sins of the Cities of the Plains (1881):
Vol. I Recollections of a Mary-Ann (Introduction) (7-26)
Vol. II: A Short Essay on Sodomy, etc. AND Tribadism (107-128).
Required Critical Reading:
Michel Foucault, "The Repressive Hypothesis" in The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 Link opens in a new window
Recommended Critical Reading:
Dominic Janes, "Oscar Wilde, Sodomy, and Mental Illness in Late Victorian England" Link opens in a new window
Week 8:
Queer Poetics
Michael Field [Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper], Selected Poems:
UNBOSOMING [from Underneath the Bough (1893)]
Sometimes I do despatch my heart [from Underneath the Bough (1893)]
CONSTANCY [from Wild Honey (1908)]
NIGHTFALL [from Wild Honey (1908)]
MY DARLING
BELOVED, MY GLORY IN THEE IS NOT CEASED [from Mystic Trees [1913]]
A SHEPHERD-BOY/GIORGIONE, Hampton Court
SAINT SEBASTIAN/ANTONELLO DA MESSINA, The Dresden Gallery
THE MAGDALEN/ TIMOTEO VITI, The Accademia at Bologna
A PEN-DRAWING OF LEDA SODOMA,The Grand Duke's Palace at Weimar
THE SLEEPING VENUS/GIORGIONE, The Dresden Gallery
L'EMBARQUEMENT POUR CYTHÈRE/ANTOINE WATTEAU, The Louvre
Sappho:
"In Sapphic Metre"
John Addington Symonds:
From Many Moods: A Volume of Verse
"The Lotos-Garland of Antinous"
"Sonnets on The Thought of Death
"The Meeting of David and Jonathan."
From In the Key of Blue and Other Prose Essays:
"Clifton and a Lad's Love"
Required Critical Reading:
Henry Havelock Ellis, "Sexual Inversion in Women" in Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol 2: Sexual Inversion Link opens in a new window
Recommended Critical Reading:
Kate Thomas, "'What Time We Kiss': Michael Field's Queer Temporalities" Link opens in a new window
Week 9:
Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys (1899) [Oxford UP edition, ed. Elleke Boehmer ONLY]
Please read the following parts:
All of Part I (Chapter 1)
All of Part II (Chapter 2 and 3)
Part IV: Chapter 6 (“Endurance for Scouts”)
Part V: Chapter 9 (“Patriotism”)
All of Part VI (“Notes for Instructors”)
Appendix: Continence
Week 10:
George Moore, Albert Nobbs (in Celibate Lives)
Required Critical Reading:
Lisa Hager, "A Case for a Trans Studies Turn in Victorian Studies: 'Female Husbands' of the Nineteenth Century" in Victorian Review 44.1.
Jen Manion, Chapter 5: "Workers" in Female Husbands: A Trans History.
BOOKS TO PURCHASE FOR 2017/18 (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)*
* Please see the syllabus above for weeks when the readings/secondary readings will be available online.
Term 1:
George and Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody (1892) [Wordsworth Classics edition]
Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Tales of New York [Penguin Classics Edition]
Arthur Morrison, A Child of the Jago (1896) [ Oxford, or fantastic Broadview edition by Diana Maltz]
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro (1899) [Library of Latin America Edition, trans. John Gledson ONLY]
Amy Levy, The Romance of a Shop (1888) [Broadview edition]
Richard Marsh, The Beetle (1897)
Term 2:
Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts (1881)
George Bernard Shaw, Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893)
Elaine Showalter, ed. Daughters of Decadence
Joseph Jeffrey Walters, Guanya Pau: A Story of an African Princess (1891) [Broadview edition, ed. Gareth Griffiths]
Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career (1901)
Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys (1899) [Oxford UP edition edited by Elleke Boehmer ONLY]
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1897) [Penguin edition edited by Colm Toibin ONLY]
George Moore, Albert Nobbs (1918)
Background Reading:
A list of background reading and reading useful for preparing your Term 1 and Term 2 essays can be found on the Library reading list (Talis Aspire). If you have suggestions for readings to add to this list, please let me know.
Assessment:
In 2021-22, there will be no exam for this module.
Non-finalists:
- An in-class presentation plus subsequent 1,500-word reflective write-up (20% percent)
- A 2,500-word essay covering term 1 materials based on set essay titles or on an independently-developed topic approved by your tutor (40%)
- A 2,500-word essay covering term 2 materials based on set essay titles or on an independently-developed topic approved by your tutor (40%)
Finalists:
- An in-class presentation plus subsequent 1,500-word reflective write-up (20% percent)
- A 3,000-word essay covering term 1 materials and requiring independent development of the topic and independent researching with nineteenth-century primary materials: 3,000 words (40%)
- A 3000-word essay covering term 2 materials requiring independent development of the topic and independent researching with nineteenth-century primary materials (40%)
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