Sex & the City: Victorian Literature in Victorian London
This course surveys British literature from 1837-1901 by considering the conjuncture of two major Victorian preoccupations: sexuality and urbanization. From pornography to poetry, journalism to the novel, we will encounter a spectrum of literary responses to the development of modern sexual and gender identities and norms, and to the growth of London as the world’s largest city in the nineteenth century. We will focus our investigation on the formal and thematic conventions associated with writing about the city and about sexuality. With theoretical prisms from psychoanalysis, queer studies, and urban studies, we will ask about the city as erotic space, about separate spheres and same-sex desire, about romance and finance, and about the fears and pleasures that galvanized the Victorians.
M 22 Aug Introduction
Let’s Talk About Sex
The City as Literary Plot and Protagonist
PART ONE: THESE STREETS ARE MADE FOR WALKING
24 Aug The Angel in the House and the Flaneur on the Street
Coventry Patmore, “The Angel in the House” excerpt
John Ruskin, “Of Queen’s Garden’s” excerpt
Sarah Stickney Ellis, “The Women of England” excerpt
Walter Benjamin, “The Flaneur”
Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography, “You Sexy Thing”
26 Aug Victoria’s Secret
Anonymous (Walter), My Secret Life excerpt
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality excerpt
M 29 Aug Urbanisms
George Reynolds, Mysteries of London prologue
Dickens, Sketches by Boz (Scenes: “The Streets -Morning, Night”)
Edwin Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the
Labouring Population excerpt
Friedrich Engels, “The Great Towns” excerpt
Asa Briggs, “Victorian Attitudes About Cities”
31 Aug ‘there were ways of living in that vast city, which those who had been
brought up in country parts had no idea of’
Dickens, Oliver Twist chapters 1-9
Alexander Welsh, Dickens and the City excerpt
Alan Robinson “Reading London” 79-81
2 Sept NO CLASS
Reading Hour: deeper into Dickens
M 5 Sept LABOR DAY
7 Sept Dickens, chapters 10-22;
William Cohen, “Manual Conduct” excerpt
9 Sept Dickens, 2: chapters 1-9
M 12 Sept Dickens, 2: chapters 10-14; 3: chapters 1-2
14 Sept Dickens, 3: chapters 3-7
16 Sept Dickens, conclusion
M 19 Sept Painted Faces, Tainted Souls
D G Rosetti, “Jenny;”
William Acton, “Prostitution Defined”; “Prostitution in England”
James Greenwood, The Seven Curses of London (Curse #4 Fallen Women)
21 Sept Urban Eros
Elizabeth Grosz, “Bodies-Cities”;
“Theory of Flirtation” The Cornhill Magazine
“Flirting As An Art” The Living Age
23 Sept Can’t Buy Me Love
Dickens, Sketches By Boz “Shops and Their Tenants”
Erica Rappoport, Shopping for Pleasure excerpt
Christina Rosetti, Goblin Market
“The Case of Amy Parker” Leisure Hour
Judith Flanders, Consuming Passions excerpt
M 26 Sept CLOSE READING ESSAY DUE
London Calling
Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel excerpt
James Leigh Hunt, “London”
Henry Mayhew, “The Great World”
28 Sept Urban Spectacles
Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller “Nightwalks”
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight excerpt
David Cohen, Jack the Ripper Casebook excerpt
30 Sept Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”
George Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life excerpt
M 3 Oct George Gissing, Eve’s Ransom
5 Oct Gissing concluded
7 Oct Sexuality 101
Joseph Bristow, Sexuality excerpt
Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality excerpt
Carolyn Dever “Everywhere and Nowhere”
Jeff Nunokawa, “Sexuality in the Victorian Novel”
PART TWO: FROM WHORES TO HORRORS
M 10 Oct and if a double decker bus/ crashes into us
Collins, Basil: Letter of Introduction; Part 1, chaps 1-9
Dickens, Sketches By Boz “Omnibuses”
12 Oct Collins, Part 1, chaps 10-12; Part 2, chaps 1-6
14 Oct Collins, Part 3, chaps 1-4
M 17 Oct Collins, Part 3, chaps 5-7
19 Oct Collins, conclusion
M 24 Oct Queer Cities
Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, “Story of the
Door” through “Remarkable Incident of Dr Lanyon”
26 Oct Stevenson, conclusion
29 Oct Doyle, The Sign of Four, chaps 1-4
M 31 Oct Doyle, conclusion
ZIZEK RESPONSE DUE
2 Nov Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface; chaps 1-3
4 Nov Wilde, chaps 4-8
M 7 Nov Wilde, chaps 9-14
9 Nov Wilde, conclusion
Nunokawa “Homosexual Desire and the Effacement of the Self”
11 Nov City of Light
Jude, Part First, Chapters 1-7
M 14 Nov Part First, 8-10; Part Second 1-7
16 Nov Part Third, 1-8
18 Nov Part Third, 9-10; Part Fourth 1-3
M 21 Nov Part Fourth, 4-6; Part Fifth 1-5
M 28 Nov Part Fifth, 6-8; Part Sixth 1-5
30 Nov Jude Conclusion