Spring 2006 Course Offerings:
English 790: Studies in Psychology and 19-Century Literature
Instructor: Dorice Elliott
Tuesday 7:00-9:50 p.m. 4023 Wescoe
This course will look specifically at how new nineteenth-century ideas about how the mind works were represented in literary and scientific works of the period and, conversely, how literary representations influenced the developing field of “mental science.” The goal of the course, however, is not simply to study the history of psychology or trace the theme of psychology in literature, but also to interrogate the ways in which we, as a post-Freudian generation, think about ourselves and our minds--to explore the literary, historical, and cultural roots of contemporary psychological assumptions. Readings will include recent historical and theoretical articles that will provide a context for the reading and discussion of nineteenth-century literary, scientific, and popular or pseudo-scientific texts. The role of literary texts and non-scientific works in nineteenth-century psychology points to two large concerns that will underlie this course: the struggle between scientific and non-scientific discourses and the role of gender in the definition of the new field of psychology.
Specific issues to be discussed will include: “abnormal” states of mind (hysteria, problems of memory, spectral vision, motiveless malignity, torments of guilt, terrors of conscience, suicide, addiction, etc.), “normal” states of mind (reasoning, emotions, dreams, sexuality), diagnosis and treatment (alienists, mesmerism, phrenology, asylums), legal implications of insanity (incarceration, criminal defense, marriage and divorce), and specifically literary concerns (new genres such as dramatic monologue and detective and sensation novels, psychology and realism, representation of consciousness, psychological criticism, etc.). The course will focus on British texts from the mid to late nineteenth century.
In addition to readings, students will write one short paper based on close reading of a text and one longer research paper. Texts: Taylor & Shuttleworth, Embodied Selves; C. Brontë, Villette; Tennyson, Maud; R. Browning, several dramatic monologues; M.E. Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret; Wilkie Collins, Armadale; selected poems of Swinburne, Morris, C. Rossetti; George Du Maurier, Trilby; Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly; Henry James, Turn of the Screw; R.L. Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Doyle, stories about Sherlock Holmes; Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray (note: several of these texts are short and very inexpensive, so don’t be alarmed).