LIT 374 Topics in Nineteenth-century Literature
3 hours
Topics in Nineteenth-century Literature may focus on a literary genre or convention (e.g., lyric or narrative poetry, realist, romantic or naturalistic novels) or an important theme (e.g., industrialization, slavery, imperialism, and the romantic imagination) as a means of understanding the literature of the period. Each semester individual instructors will anchor the course in specific sub-topics, primary texts, cultures, historical moments, etc., depending on their own areas of specialization. The course will approach the canon for this period not as a fixed entity but as a body of work consistently open to reevaluation and critique; alternative texts, voices, and subject positions relevant to the topic(s) will be included. Topics in Nineteenth-Century Literature will examine select major and minor literary movements, authors, and ideas at work in 19th-century literature with an eye to the formal features of texts as well as the social, historical, and political contexts in which they appear.
Corequisite
LIT 260 or permission of the instructor