Literary Séance

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

When we study the literature of past eras, we are offered a window into the lives, thoughts, and voices of people who have long since left this world. In this sense, any class session devoted to the study of nineteenth-century literature is a form of séance, "a meeting at which people attempt to make contact with the dead." This course will explore how and why we seek to commune with historical lives, both real and fictional, through literature. While I employ the term "séance" primarily as a metaphor for this encounter, it also acknowledges the growing spiritualist movement in the Victorian era which we will encounter in several readings. Our exploration of the nineteenth century will be guided by several questions: How might the study of nineteenth-century literary texts be enriched, transformed, or baffled by encounters with the era's material relics? How might archival or museal encounters shape and redirect literary inquiry? How do particular objects come to be preserved, and what do the silences and absences of the archive teach us about British culture both past and present? We will read a diverse selection of texts in this class, and our literary encounters will be shaped by visits to the many London-based author houses, archives, and museums where vestiges of nineteenth-century British culture are preserved, as well as a weekend trip to the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth. The objects we encounter will range from the familiar (e.g. handwritten manuscripts) to the strange and unexpected (e.g. Victorian hair jewelry). Over the course of the semester, you will have the opportunity to read widely and think deeply about the relationship between literature and material culture while gaining a rich understanding of London as a literary and historical site.