Topics for Paper #2

Victorian Masculinities

Summer I, 1999


Directions: Choose one of the following to topics to discuss in your second critical paper which is due on July 2. These papers should be 5-7 pages in length and should be constructed around a thesis which is related to one of the topics.

1) Erotic experience in Swinburne.

2) Narcissism and gender: Rossetti's "Jenny" and Christina Rossetti's "In an Artist's Studio"

3) Death as erotic experience: Pater and/or Swinburne

4) Dorian relationships and the problem of "influence": Wilde and Symonds

5) Darwinian natural selection: Dorian Gray

6) Pater's "Conclusion" and Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. WH"

7) Homosexual identity and Aestheticism: Foucault, Wilde, Pater, internet links

8) Imperialism and The Jungle Books

9) The Jungle Books as masculine Bildungsroman

10) The pleasures of violence

11) Animalism and Darwinism: Kipling, Tennyson, Wilde

12) Male bonding in Dorian Gray and The Jungle Books