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.