ENG 5114 Victorian Material Culture
"Victorians" are often regarded as having been "stuffy," and Victorian homes are often thought of as overstuffed. What are the connections between these two forms of Victorian stuffiness? What motivations gave rise to collecting art, arranging objects in the home, decorating spaces and bodies, and crafting rules for proper behavior? This course explores these questions, by investigating how Victorian authors across a variety of genres represented the palpable pressures of modernization, materialism, secularization, consumerism, and high and mass culture.