230568 Victorian Cultural Discourses (S) (SoSe 2008)

There are many definitions of "culture"; one of them regards culture as "networks of signification". This implies that artefacts, social practices and institutions as well as written and spoken discourses can be analyzed with regard to the way they are interrelated in contributing to the creation of what the contemporaries regarded as significant, true and valuable. In this course, we will study a range of key phenomena of the Victorian era with a view to the complex networks of meaning in which they are on the one hand embedded, and which on the other they maintain. We will analyze historical documents, theoretical tracts, pamphlets, architecture, arts, literature, thus surveying a broad range of manifestations of cultural meanings in Victorian Britain. The central cultural concepts that we will investigate are connected with phenomena such as industrialization, the discourse of the classes, domesticity, religion, and imperialism.

A reader containing a variety of texts and other documents will be made available at the beginning of the semester.