8:121
Victorian Women Poets: Course Information and Assignments

TTh 2:30-3:45, Room 104 EPB

Instructor: Florence Boos florence-boos@uiowa.edu

http://english.uiowa.edu/courses/boos/victwp07

Office: 319 EPB, office phone 335-0434 (answering machine)

Office hours: most afternoons after class; Tuesday 4-5 p. m.; Wednesdays 4:30-5:30 p. m.

Textbook at IMU:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, Norton Critical Edition

Textbook to be available at IMU, also at Amazon.com:

Margaret Higonnet, ed. British Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century

Handouts will be provided on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Janet Hamilton, Ellen Johnston, and Eliza Cook. I will also provide copies of critical readings on Victorian women poets.

Course Requirements:

1. contributions to class discussion: please read the assignment before class and come prepared to ask questions and comments on unusual features of the text.

From time to time, I will ask students to give a brief class presentation on an author's life, and/or to prepare responses and questions for our readings.

2. journal/reading responses: please prepare 6 reading responses, the equivalent of two double-spaced typed pages each, to be posted on Icon so that your fellow students may read them. Four of your responses should be on course readings, and two on literary criticism about Victorian women poets. For this latter, I will give you a short bibliography of suggested readings.

3. In addition to posting these responses to the class web site, you will be asked to write a six page critical/research paper, and a six page final take-home examination.

Your critical/research paper must be based on research in the biographies, book-length critical studies, and critical articles on the author you have chosen (that is, you cannot merely use web-page citations). It is due October 25th.

4. The final essay/take-home exam will be a comparative critical discussion of the works of two or more poets you have read during the course.

The final will be held during examination week, most likely on Tuesday December 18th, 2007 unless students vote for another day that week.

5. You will be asked to provide for the class a brief biography of a poet of your choice, and to lead an approx. 20 minute class discussion of one of her poems.

Suggested Topics for Critical Essay
title and bibliography due October 16th; outline and abstract/thesis statement due the 23rd; paper due the 30th

Be sure to consider elements of style, form, language and audience as well as content, and to place the poems you discuss in appropriate biographical, critical and historical contexts.

Rhetoric and Audience in "The Cry of the Children"
The Industrial Revolution, The Factory Acts and "The Cry of the Children"
The Rupture of Familial Relationships in "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"/Race and Morality in "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"
Necessary Infanticide? The Effectivenes of the Ending of "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"
"The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" as an Abolitionist Poem/and the Barrett Family’s Relationship to Slavery
Social Issues in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Cry of the Children" and "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point"
E. B. Browning's and Augusta Webster's Portrayals of Social Outcasts
Maternity and Children in the Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Bronwning and Augusta Webster
Aurora Leigh as a Female Bildungsroman/Double Bildungsroman
Aurora Leigh and Jane Eyre
Italy, France and England in Aurora Leigh
The Role of Art in AL/Class Division in AL
Women’s Education in AL/Literary Audiences and Critics in AL
Social Criticism in Aurora Leigh/ The “Marriage Debate” in AL
The Representation of Miriam in AL/The Failed Wedding Scene in AL (or any other scene or description, such as of the burning of Leigh Hall)
Letters, Gossip and Portraits in AL
Resolution? The Final Scene of Aurora Leigh
Augusta Webster's "The Castaway" and Victorian Debates on 'The Woman Question'
Contrasting Views of the Fallen Woman: D. G. Rossetti's "Jenny" and Augusta Webster's "The Castaway"
Character or Situation? Identity in the Dramatic Monologues of Robert Browning and Augusta Webster (e. g., “Andrea del Sarto” and “The Castaway”)
Two Forms of the Dramatic Monologue: Augusta Webster’s “A Castaway” and Amy Levy's "Xantippe" (or any other combination; could use EBB, Cook, Johnston, or Michael Field)
"A Minor Poet" and "Xantippe": Levy's Deathbed Monologues
Tempering Judgment with Sympathy: the Dramatic Monologues of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Augusta Webster (or any others)
The Dramatic Monologue as a Vehicle for Social Criticism/Psychological Exploration
What Are Those Goblin Fruits? Sensuous Experience and Repression in Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"
Sisterly Love in "Goblin Market"
Redemption in "Goblin Market": The Devotional Life of Christina Rossetti
Fairytale as Allegory in "Goblin Market"/Social Criticism in "Goblin Market"
Rhythm and Meaning in Christina Rossetti's Lyrics
Christina Rossetti’s “In An Artist’s Studio” and the Pre-Raphaelite Ideal of Woman
“In An Artist’s Studio” and Michael Field’s “A Portrait”
Rhythm and Meaning in Christina Rossetti's Lyrics
Christina Rossetti’s Devotional Poems/ Poems on Sisterhood
“Monna Innominata” vs. “The House of Life” (or AW’s “Mother and Daughter”)
Gender and Silence in “Monna Innominata”
“The “Fallen Woman” in the Poetry of Christina Rossetti and Augusta Webster (or EBB and AW)
The Voice of the Working-Class Poet: Mary Macpherson/Janet Hamilton/Ellen Johnston and Eliza Cook [an autobiography for Johnston is available]
Eliza Cook’s Poetry and Journalism/ Social Criticism in the Poems of Eliza Cook
Humor in the Poems of Working-Women
Eroticism and Art in Michael Field

Victorian Women Poets, Final Paper/Exam:

This is to be handed in at our final session on Tuesday December 18th, 2007 at 2:30 p. m. Those who cannot attend on Tuesday may arrange to meet me the afternoon of Monday the 17th.

For your final essay you should write a six+ page paper contrasting some aspect of the poetry of two writers we have studied to consider how they represent an important topic or aspect of Victorian women’s poetic culture or sensibility. If the poets you discuss are from different periods, you should consider whether their different choices reflect shifts in Victorian culture, poetic taste, or changes in women’s circumstances or expectations as the century progressed.

To what audiences do they appeal? Are their concerns largely women’s concerns, or do they overlap those of male poets as well? Are their poems successful? Your essay, in other words, should comment not only on the poems themselves but how they express women poets’ thematic concerns or the stylistic tastes of their respective periods.

Your essay should include comments on formal features of the poetry you discuss: style, stanzaic form, rhythm, meter and diction.

Poets we have studied have included:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Augusta Webster, Christina Rossetti, Celtic ballads, working-class poets Hamilton and Johnston, Eliza Cook, Amy Levy, Michael Field (Edith Cooper and Katherine Bradley), Mathilde Blind, Mary Coleridge, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Jean Ingelow, May Kendall, Toru Dutt, May Probyn, Edith Nesbit, Adalaide Anne Proctor, Alice Meynell, Dora Sigerson Shorter, Olive Custance, Katherine Tynan, Louisa Bevington, Rosamund Marriott Watson and Charlotte Mew.

Topics you might consider for contrast include:

the use of the dramatic monologue/ballad/sonnet form
use of imagery, symbols and allegory
use of landscape; themes of nature and the environment
issues of sexuality
religious imagery/issues of belief and doubt
revisionist uses of faith; notions of divinity and spirituality, goddesses
introspection, the divided or alienated self
the oppressions of convention
myth and legend (e. g. Arthurian legend, classical mythology)
fallenness/”original sin”/divided or alienated selves
the “fallen woman” and redemption
the possibility of romantic love/human connection
issues of fate/social determination
war and conflict
the uses of music/art/history
the meaning of death
evocation of regional differences
motherhood
sisterhood, female friendship

patterns of the lyric
social hierarchy/issues of class and marginalization/issues of race
the meditative sequence/ narrative poetry
redemption/human fellowship/alternative societies or ideals
the nature of beauty; the nature of morality
the sense of time
science, evolution, formal learning
children and childhood
poverty