ENG 5361-Victorian Poetry, Reforming Christ's Body Dashboard
Description
Victorian poets were among the most active reformers in an age of reform, intensely restructuring poetic form to reflect upon, contend with, and influence their swiftly changing world. They devoted a tremendous amount of their reconfiguring energy to the body of Christ, understood both as the person of Christ and as those who are members of Christ. For many Victorian poets, reforming poetry entailed reformulating and reimagining Christ's body, often as an agent of reform in the world. In this class, we will examine this vital aspect of Victorian literature and culture in dialogue with rare items at the Armstrong Browning Library. You will create presentations and blog posts on these rare items, and supplement your posts with related entries on our class timeline and map on COVE.
Galleries, Timelines, and Maps
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Individual Entries
In the issue published the week of August 22, 1846, The People's Journal, a socially progressive and literarily well-connected weekly, reported on a painter/forester in Sherwood Forest around whom a sort of school had started. The journal published reports like these in the optimistic belief that "[t]he influence of [similar] example[s] propagates itself with wonderful rapidity, and, aided by the press and public opinion, it is enabled to exercise a power almost omnipotent" (15).
To read a related blog post, click here: https://blogs.baylor.edu/19crs/2020/01/17/progressive-pragmatic-redemption-the-peoples-journal/
Located in the center of London, this royal church's cemetery holds the graves of many of England's most important figures, including royalty, religious figures, scientists, and writers. Alfred Lord Tennyson was buried here with great honor on October 12, 1892. He was buried in the poet's corner near Robert Browning, and his resting place is noted by a simple dark gray burial stone giving his name and date of birth and death in gold lettering.
To read a related blog post, click here: http://blogs.baylor.edu/19crs/2020/01/15/hymning-tennyson…onal-hagiography/
When Alfred, Lord Tennyson ended his professional relationship with Edward Moxon and Co. (44 Dover Street, Piccadilly) in 1869, the firm had been publishing his work for over thirty years. Although Tennyson had good relations with Edward Moxon himself, the poet's relationship to James Bertrand Payne, Moxon's successor, was fraught with tension. Tennyson's frustrations with Payne were rooted in Payne's commercial and financial strategies, by which the poet felt exploited. These tensions came to a head over Moxon's publication of an ornate illustrated edition of Tennyson's Idylls of the King, a venture that ultimately proved detrimental to the firm's finances and reputation.
To read a related blog post, click here: http://blogs.baylor.edu/19crs/2020/01/15/layers-of-interp…-king-in-context/
The appointment of Edward Dowden to the chair of English at Trinity College, Dublin in 1867 marks a shift in scholarship and study in the Western University. He is among the first generation of scholars dedicated to the study of English language and literature, making his most notable and lasting impact through several volumes on Shakespeare, a multi-volume biography of the Shelleys, and many publications and lectures on other English writers and poets. Many of his notable letters to his future wife Elizabeth Dickinson West Dowden were written during his tenure there, several being posted from the Examination Hall in which he taught.
To read a related blog post, click here: https://blogs.baylor.edu/19crs/2020/01/15/keble-in-conversation-reception-and-use-of-kebles-language-in-the-letters-of-edward-and-elizabeth-dickinson-dowden/
The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) published Christina Rossetti's The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Book of Revelation in 1892 and Verses in 1893. Founded in 1698, SPCK (36 Causton St., Westminster, London, SW1P 4AU, UK) i s the oldest Anglican mission organization in the world. Rossetti cut ties with SPCK in March of 1894 over the society's publication of a work supporting vivisection. SPCK still exists today, publishing the work of such authors as N.T. Wright and Rowan Williams.
To read a related blog post, click here: http://blogs.baylor.edu/19crs/2020/01/15/creation-in-cont…face-of-the-deep/