WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2009-2010       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Enlightenment to Modernism: British Literature, 1780-1900
ENGL 208
Spring 2010
Section: 01  

This course offers an introduction to modern British literature and culture, with an emphasis on the ways in which literary form responds to and shapes the movements of history. We begin with the emergence in the late 18th century of two new literary forms with substantial debts to the Enlightenment--the novel and Romantic poetry--and trace the development of these genres in the hands of later writers, from George Eliot's panoramic depiction of a small city at a moment of profound historical, social, and economic transformation to Thomas Hardy's portrait of a single young woman whose story is at once utterly individual and reflective of human experience; from Robert Browning's repudiation of Romantic confession to Oscar Wilde's definition of art as artifice, or "lying." Central themes include changing concepts of personhood; the relation among science, nature, and faith; the politics of class and gender; the tension between the language of everyday life and the language of literature; and the role of art in a rapidly changing, chaotic, and often exhilarating modern world.

Essential Capabilities: None
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (ENGL)(ENGL-Literature)
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available

Last Updated on DEC-22-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459