ENGL 72.03 Bohemia: Glamorous Outcasts & the Nineteenth-Century Novel

Bohemia - an urban underworld of social outcasts, struggling artists, and political conspirators - is one of the most enduring fantasies to emerge out of the nineteenth century. By the 1890s, the figure of the Bohemian had become central to a cosmopolitan literary culture eager to assert its autonomy from the marketplace and restrictive notions of nationality. It had also become bound up with a range of anxieties fixated on cultural decadence, racial degeneration, transgressive sexuality, political revolution and the occult. This course will study a series of novels that foreground these issues, including Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, George Gissing's New Grub Street, George Du Maurier's Trilby and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. We will also glance ahead to early twentieth-century texts like Henry Miller’s The Tropic of Cancer.

Instructor

Not being offered in 2022-23

Prerequisite

Recommended: Four completed major courses.

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

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Department-Specific Course Categories

Senior Seminar: Course Group II