Aestheticism in Victorian Britain: Art for Art's Sake among the Pre-Raphaelites and the Wilde Circle
ENGL 261
Spring 2007 not offered
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This course focuses on two groups of artists and intellectuals whose ideas about art and society were deliberately and self-consciously dissident and experimental: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, formed at Oxford in 1848 and active in London until the early 1870s; and the "decadent" circle centered around Oscar Wilde in the 1890s. We will examine a variety of literary and non-literary texts, from poetry and novels to aesthetic theory and sociologial investigations, as well as painting, drawing, architecture, textiles, and interior design. Issues to be addressed include: theories of art for art's sake and their political valences; experimental and avant garde ideas and practices of art; the social and cultural space occupied by well-educated and often well-off artists--an "elite margin"; the interaction among various modes of artistic expression, most especially painting and poetry; the relation between "high" art and the aesthetic way of life, which by turns embraced artisanal crafts, popular culture, industrial production, and the decorative arts; and the sexual, gender, class, and (inter-)national dynamics of artistic production and consumption during these years. |
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Essential Capabilities:
Writing |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: ENGL201 |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
Among the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne, William Holman Hunt.
Among the Wilde Circle: Oscar Wilde, Lionel Johnson, W.B. Yeats, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper.
Aesthetic theory: William Wordsworth, John Keats, Alfred Tennyson, Arthur Hugh Clough, Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Two 4-5 page focused research essays; one final research essay of approximately 15 pages. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course fulfills the English Department's research requirement for honors thesis writers.
Pre-requisite overrides will be granted for students with one upper-level course in literature or art history. |
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