Department of English

Readings in poetry, fiction, and criticism, including parodies. Writers include Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, pater, Wilde, Yeats. Some attention will be paid to parallel developments in France, notably Symbolist poetry Thomas Mann. We will test current definitions of the three movements, and glances back to the Romantics and forward to the High Modernist mode will give persepctive to all three as phases of broader European significance. We will examine current definitions of both the avant-garde and the countercultural, as well as gender-theory and sexual politics in the period.