Literature and Philosophy in Nineteenth-Century British Culture

Over the nineteenth century the notion of "literature" reached its modern form (a non-instrumental form of discourse, comprising but not limited to "poetry"), and philosophy finally became divorced from more empirically-based forms of inquiry such as the natural and the social sciences. Over this period, much British literature approached various topics of philosophical inquiry, some old, some recent, and sometimes produced interesting variations on them by exploring the potential of the idea that philosophical topics can be approached in ways that are specifically literary, e.g. by being dramatic and polyvocal rather than expository. In this course we will explore some of the main examples of the genre, focusing on both the general context of thought and each writer's intervention in it.