A2 Outline Answer on "Victorian Lit Labor Issues the Key Concern"

Quoted Instructions for "Victorian Lit Labor Issues the Key Concern" Assignment:

Please outline answers to 6 of the following 8 questions. They will be on an exam, so this doesn't need to to be in depth, doesn't need direct quotations. I can continue buying pages, just let me know what you need

N.B. No more than one work can figure in two responses; no work can figure in all three. In other words, you’ll need to discuss a minimum of eight different works.

Outline an argument that responds to the question: include a thesis sentence for each), which should be precise and to the point in trying to specify the relevance of each work you discuss, and then support your claims by reference to, and analysis of, specific characters, situations, actions, and so forth. (Verbatim quotation, though always welcome, isn't expected.) Think of each of these short essays as a condensed version of the type of argument that the earlier paper assignments requested: comparison-contrast.

1: As it celebrated work, Victorian culture also was preoccupied with the burdens of labor. Compare the nature and significance of labor (which may include the desire to escape from it) as represented in any three of the following works: Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott” or “The Lotos-Eaters”; Carlyle, Sartor Resartus or Past and Present; Hood, “The Song of the Shirt”; Eliot, The Mill on the Floss; Ruskin, “The Nature of Gothic”; Webster, “A Castaway”; Kipling, “The Man Who Would Be King.”

2: The idea of progress is a central point of reference in a wide range of Victorian literature. Compare its nature (how do we recognize it?) and significance (as inspiration, challenge, terrible burden, delusion?) in any three of the following works: Mill, “A Crisis in My Mental History” or “Of Individuality” (On Liberty); Newman, “The Tamworth Reading Room”; Tennyson, “Locksley Hall”; Tennyson, In Memoriam; Carlyle, Past and Present.

3. Despite popular associations of “Victorian” with a deeply repressive social order, we’ve read a number of works that are centrally concerned with the nature and value of passion, both moral and erotic. Compare the representation of passion—its pleasures and its pains—in any three of the following works: Browning, “Andrea del Sarto” or “The Last Ride Together”; EB Browning, “Aurora Leigh”; George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss; Morris, “The Defense of Guenevere”; Rossetti, “Jenny”; Swinburne, “The Triumph of Time” or “Anactoria”; Tennyson, “Locksley Hall” or “Lucretius”; Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Kipling, “The Man Who Would Be King.”

4: “Liberty requires new definitions,” Carlyle declares in Past and Present. His concern with personal freedom is echoed by many *****s in the course, but they engage the issue from varied perspectives. Compare the nature and importance of freedom, and the (corresponding) challenges to it, in any three of the following works: Carlyle, Past and Present; Ruskin, “The Nature of Gothic”; Browning, “Fra Lippo Lippi”; Mill, “Of Individuality” (On Liberty); Arnold, “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time.”

5: The power of Victorian social and moral norms—particularly those regarding sexuality—were typically enforced by the threat of scandal befalling who transgressed those norms. Compare the role of scandal (or scandalous behavior) in the moral design of any three of the following works: Dickens, Oliver Twist; Eliot, Mill on the Floss; Tennyson, “Guinevere”; Mill, “Of Individuality” (On Liberty); Meredith, Modern Love; Webster, “A Castaway”; Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

6. A newly broad access to visual art prompted extensive reflection on the moral dimensions of artistic creation and appreciation—sometimes through representation of the abuse of art. Compare the moral significance associated with art and aesthetic experience in any three of the following works: Tennyson, “The Palace of Art”; Browning, “My Last Duchess”; Browning, “Fra Lippo Lippi”; Ruskin, “The Nature of Gothic”; Pater, “Conclusion” to The Renaissance.

7. It is hard to overstate the importance of an idealized domesticity in Victorian culture. Naturally the celebrations also triggered powerful dissents. Compare the representations of domestic life in any three of the following works, focusing on the norms of womanhood bound up with the domestic ideal: Dickens, Oliver Twist; Browning, “Andrea del Sarto”; Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh; Tennyson, In Memoriam; Webster, “A Castaway”; Tennyson, “Guinevere”

8. “Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to man,” Carlyle writes in Past and Present. Compare the experience of solitude—does it offer pleasures as well as burdens?—in any three of the following works: Tennyson, “*****na” or “The Palace of Art” or “The Lady of Shalott”; Dickens, Oliver Twist; Carlyle, Sartor Resartus or Past and Present; George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss; Webster, “A Castaway”; Pater, “Conclusion” to The Renaissance.