ENGL261 - Aestheticism in Victorian Britain: Art for Art's Sake among the Pre-Raphaelites and the Wilde Circle

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Academic Year 2003/2004

Aestheticism in Victorian Britain: Art for Art's Sake among the Pre-Raphaelites and the Wilde Circle
ENGL 261 SP

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.

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.

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.

COURSE FORMAT: Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL Grading Mode: Graded

Prerequisites: ENGL201

SECTION 01

Instructor(s): Kuduk,Stephanie A.

Times: ..T.R.. 10:30AM-11:50AM; Location: FISK115

Reserved Seats: (Total Limit: 19)

SR. major: 8 Jr. major: 7

SR. non-major: 2 Jr. non-major: 1 SO: 1 FR: 0

Special Attributes:

Curricular Renewal: Reading Non-Verbal Texts, Writing

Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-19-2004