This seminar will explore the complicated way in which some nineteenth-century writers attempted to construct and stabilize the concept of "masculinity" or "manliness." Necessarily, we will also explore a number of writers who dedicated themselves to disrupting and challenging these norms. The course title uses the plural, in other words, because this course is grounded in the assumption (an easy one to demonstrate) that Victorian culture generated a variety of different and often conflicting models of "manliness." Moreover, these models of manliness seem to play increasingly important roles in a wide variety of important social and cultural movements over the course of the century, from the emergence of a middle class patriarchy to the development of feminist consciousness to the creation of the Aestheticist movement. We will be reading many different types of texts -- poetry, prose, and novels; some written by men, some by women -- and will attempt to survey this topic in as much of its variety as we can. The course will cover such topics as the following: "The Dandy," "Middle Class Earnestness," "Muscular Christians," "The Dandy-Aesthete," "Imperial Manliness," "Post-Darwinian Man," "The Man in the Closet." Readings will be drawn from, among others: Carlyle, the Brontës, Kingsley, the Rossettis, Pater, Wilde, Kipling, and Symonds. Supplemental readings will be drawn primarily from the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, but we will also be paying some degree of attention to the ideas of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Richard Dellamora, Herbert Sussman, James Eli Adams, Linda Dowling, J. A. Mangan, and others. Requirements include 3 papers for undergraduates; 4 for graduate students (Topics for Paper #1) (Topics for 2nd Graduate Paper) (Topics for UG Paper #2) (Topics for Final Paper)

Books

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre.
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights.
Butler, Judith.  Gender Trouble.
Foucault, Michel.  The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1.
Hughes, Thomas.  Tom Brown's Schooldays.
Haggard, H. Rider.  She.
Kipling, Rudyard.  The Jungle Books.
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray.

These books will be available at the ASU Bookstore. Additional readings will be available through online links and in the Reserve Room at ASU's Hayden Library.

N.B. This syllabus is subject to change up to the 11th hour and additions may be made throughout the semester (although assignments will not change).  Highlighted titles are available online. Required readings follow the date. Supplemental readings from the Web can be found in { } following the required readings.
 

T, 1/19: Introduction to the Course

T, 1/26: Carlyle's "The Dandiacal Body" et al. {Sartor Resartus}, Selections from Past and Present, and Gender Performativity; Selections from Butler's Gender Trouble, pp. 1-34.

{Carlyle,On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History; Past and Present (1843)
 The Victorian Web;  Bartleby; Don't Wait Until It's Too Late;  Social Construction of Carlyle's New England Reputation, 1834-1836 }

{Byronic Man:  The Lord Byron Page; Charlotte Brontë; Jane Eyre essays; Jane Eyre and Gender; Bronte Archives, The; The Bronte Sisters Web; Online Jane Eyre; Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte}

{Wolfish Man; Emily Brontë; Wuthering Heights; Filth and Class; The Supposed Excessive Sexuality of Lower Classes and Tribal Cultures ;Emily Jane Brontë ; The Emily Bronte Page; The Speech of Aristophanes from Plato's Symposium}

{On the Sentimental tradition: Edmund Burke,  "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful ; From the "Dictionary of Sensibility," see:  sympathy ;  compassion/pity ;  character}

T, 3/2:Muscular Christianity and the English Public School Ethos: "Muscular Christianity for the consumer, Social Darwinism for the constrained":  Newman ("The Definition of a Gentleman" from The Idea of a University ). Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays.

{Muscular Christianity; Christian Socialism; Heroic Asceticism; F. D. Maurice; Charles Kingsley; Charles Kingsley as Christian Socialist; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Thomas Hughes; Newman Links; John Henry Newman; his earnest preaching; Newman on the Gentleman; Victorian Web on the Apologia pro Vita Sua; Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864 text)}

T, 3/16: ********************************Spring Break*************************************

T, 3/23: Male Adventure Fiction: Haggard, She; Butler, pp. 93-110.

{The Ruins of Zimbabwe; Ancient Egypt; Rider Haggard Site; Anglo-Zulu War Site}

{Walter Pater, "Style" (1888); The Rossetti Archive; Aesthetes and Aestheticism; Algernon Charles Swinburne; Shipwrecked and Cast Away in the Sea of Time; Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Pre-Raphaelitism in Poetry; Christina Rossetti}

{Rictor Norton's Essays on Gay History and Sexuality; Oscar Wilde: The Complete Shorter Fiction & Poems in Prose; John Addington Symonds; Edward Carpenter; Havelock Ellis; Aesthetes and Decadents; Arthur Symons; Other Artists Associated with the Aesthetic and Decadent Movement(s); The 1885 Criminal Law Amendment}

T, 4/20: Wolfish Man, Part 2: Kipling, The Jungle Books (The Mowgli stories only).

{Rudyard Kipling, The Kipling Society, The Complete Kipling Poems,  Stalky and Co., "'The White Man's Burden' and its Critics}

{Lord Jim; Masculinity and Imperialism Bibliography}

T, 5/11: **Final Papers due**Topics.

Undergraduate Requirements (ENG 430)

2 critical papers should be 3-5 pages in length. Deadlines will be decided on the first day of class. The final paper, a critical research paper of 10-15 pages, is due on the final day of class (Topics).  In addition, each student should give one brief (10 minutes) oral presentation in class (Schedule for Presentations).

Graduate Requirements (ENG 545)

3 critical papers (3-5 pages in length), a final critical research paper (10-15 pages in length), and two oral presentations.

A supplemental reading list can be found here.  All required readings in the syllabus above can be found either in the books purchased for the course, on the Web through links supplied above, or, in the case of a few articles, on Reserve in the Hayden Library.

Links to valuable indexes, bibliographies, databases, and other sources can be found on my web page.  For your final papers you will no doubt wish to make use of the  MLA Bibliography, the  LITIR Victorian Database, and, for general information, the Encyclopedia Britannica.  You should also note that the Chadwyck Healey literary database is keyword searchable.