ENGL 4430 - [Victorian Literature and Psychology: Madness, Monstrosity and the Science of Mind]

(crosslisted) BSOC 4431
(HB) (LA-AS)

Fall or Spring. Next Offered: 2020-2021. 4 credits. Student option grading.

E. Cohn.

This course examines a range of nineteenth-century British literature, focusing on how Victorian writers represented the workings of the human mind. In particular, we examine how novels (and a few poems) trace the development of subjectivity in a variety of genres, while also reading selections from psychological texts of the period. In these works, we study Victorian interest in the relation between the self and society as it emerges through sympathy, memory, emotion, reverie, obsession, hysteria, monomania, insanity, and double consciousness. We will also evaluate how well more recent psychological concepts like trauma can elucidate Victorian texts. Readings may include Charlotte Brontë, Villette; Robert Browning, selected poems; Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White; Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret; George Eliot, Daniel Deronda; Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton; Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Tennyson, Maud.