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Victorian Poetry
Email course leader:
stefan.hawlin@buckingham.ac.uk
One term: 15 units
The Victorian period was when our 'modern' world began: when slavery was made illegal, towns grew hugely in size, democracy was founded, when faster transport (rail, steamship) got under way. The realist fiction of the period (Dickens, the Brontes, Eliot etc.) is undeniably great art; but what of the poets? This course is an introduction to the rich and complex poetry of the era. It can be taken on its own, or as extending and complementing Victorian Fiction. It aims to give you:
- a detailed knowledge of four major poets (Hopkins, Browning, Hardy and Tennyson) and their historical context.
- an understanding of the development of the work of each poet, and of the differences between their work.
- an increased understanding understanding of and sensitivity to prosody.
The course is assessed by course work (50%), and examination (50%).
The topics studied include:
- Tennyson's early 'picture' poems
- Inventing a new genre: Browning's early dramatic monologues
- The mature monologues: Browning's Men and Women (1855)
- 'God's Grandeur' in Hopkins's poems of 1877
- The later Hopkins
- Thomas Hardy and the lyric of doubt
- The great elegy : Hardy's 'Poems of 1912–13'
- Revision + essay workshop
Set texts for study:
- The Norton Anthology of Poetry (5th ed., New York: W.W. Norton, 2005). ISBN: 978-0-393-97920-6.
- Phillips, Catherine (ed.). Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). ISBN: 0-19-282303-5.
- Loucks, J.F. & A.M. Stauffer (eds). Robert Browning's Poetry : A Norton Critical Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007). ISBN: 978-0-393-92600-2.
- Hynes, Samuel (ed.). Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). ISBN: 0-19-282268-3.
- Day, Aidan (ed.). Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems (London: Penguin, 1991). ISBN: 0-14-044545-5.