Ruth Richardson's comment on the "extraordinary energy directed toward the celebration of death in the Victorian era" has become an accurate assessment of scholarly trends over the past three decades. Increasing volumes of work on death ritual and its elaborate trappings make it possible to speak legitimately of a burgeoning "death industry" within the field of Victorian studies. This course seeks some purchase on this industry and the many texts--novels, poems, pictures, plays, non-fiction prose, and reportage--that constitute it.
Our investigations within this broad textual array will be contextualized by extensive reading in present-day historical and critical studies. We shall, then, consider not only how the Victorians might have experienced death, but how they represented it: what discursive models informed their lamentations, how nationalist aspirations influenced their public mourning, why conventions of sentiment were so popular, in what ways vampirism and self-destruction were incorporated into literature, and how the corpse was dealt with (literally and imaginatively). Death as spectacle, death as lucrative business, death as remembrance, death as suicide, death as symbol, death as mystery--these are some of the permutations we'll consider. Although participants should not expect a comprehensive introduction to Victorian literature, the readings themselves offer fascinating, if necessarily selective, insights into an important genera of nineteenth-century writing. Close reading, historical investigation, class-, gender-, and race-inflected criticism may be taken loosely as the course's theoretical orientations, although all thoughtful approaches are welcome.Please have Bronfen & Goodwin's "Introduction" to "Death and Representation" (course kit) read for the first meeting.
TEXTS Students are to purchase the following texts:
A COURSE KIT will also be required, including works by: Bronfen & Goodwin, C. Christ, G. Cruikshank, J.S. Curl, J. Galsworthy, B. Gates, S. Gilman, "Illustrated London News," P. Jalland, J. Morley, A. Munich, R. Richardson, J.M. Rymer, P.W. Sinnema
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