ENGL 351-01, Victorian Poetry and Prose, Spring 1999

Abstract

Concepts and strategies like these aren’t created overnight; they emerge with a kind of geologic slowness, layer on layer, out of all manner of cultural discourse: journalism, professional and academic writing, political reportage, and literature. To highlight particularly sensitive ideas in British cultures in this era, I’ve grouped prose texts into four clusters, each considering a particular topic. Around these clusters, we will survey the work of 6 poets. Not every issue in the prose clusters will illuminate every poem we read, but the context of these prose readings will help us see how poems speak to, respond to, create, or theorize common, everyday questions in different form.