Victorian Liberalism

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course explores liberalism (and its alternatives) in Britain during the Victorian period. Although that might sound neat and compact, much of the course’s interest will emerge from learning that it is quite the opposite. Liberalism in general is a highly multivalent and evolving term, deployed in diverse and often confused ways across domains of literature, politics, law, religion, and more. Students can expect several kinds of frame-working that will send us outward from Victorianism in both historical scope and geography—outward into matters such as imperialism and colonialism (notably in South Asia, the Caribbean, and the “Irish Question”), and historical affairs that need attention from the start of the 19th Century and into the 20th Century. Even within the Victorian period, liberalism undergoes some dramatic shifts in its applications. Literary readings include such writers as Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Oscar Wilde, George Gissing, and H.G. Wells. We will also explore period essays or book selections by writers such as J.S. Mill, Thomas Carlyle, Walter Bagehot, Herbert Spencer, and more. Finally, latter-day scholarship will support our primary texts and issues along the way. Coursework will involve ungraded reading journals, two short, graded mid-term papers, and a longer final paper with a research component.