The Victorian Period. Attitudes, Values, and Ideas

The course treats the nineteenth century as the workshop where modern Britain, and by extension much of the moral, political, and intellectual furniture we still live with, was actually built, tracing how industrialization, religious doubt, evolutionary science, and democratic pressure reshaped what people believed and valued. You'll work primarily through Steinbach alongside a course pack of primary sources, with the grade resting on two essays and a final written exam that ask you to read Victorian texts critically rather than just summarize them. Think of it as the historical-context backbone for the Victorian novel and poetry courses: once you see why Arnold, Carlyle, and the higher critics mattered, the literature stops looking quaint and starts looking like an argument.