Literature and Philosophy in Nineteenth-Century British Culture

Nineteenth-century Britain is where "literature" and "philosophy" pull apart into the disciplines we recognize today, and this seminar examines what happens when poets and novelists keep doing philosophy anyway—dramatically, obliquely, polyvocally rather than through straight argument. You'll read across a wide arc (Wordsworth and Coleridge through Wilde, Hardy, and early Eliot), pairing canonical figures with lesser-anthologized works and philosophical interlocutors like Mill, Schopenhauer, and Huxley, with assessment leaning on participation, an oral exam, and term papers rather than timed writing. It complements the period survey courses by treating Romantic and Victorian writing as a sustained argument about nature, selfhood, religion, gender, and art, and it rewards students who can hold abstract ideas and close textual detail in view at the same time.