19th-Century Radicalism: A Comparative Approach

Please note that this Summer School seminar will start on 30 May with weekly four-hour sessions.

The 19th century was a period of dramatic social, political and cultural changes in Britain, but also in the rest of Europe and the US. A series of Reform Acts brought significant changes in voting rights and other sociopolitical matters, and the Revolutions of 1848 would dramatically impact the way countries across Europe would see class relations, political democracy and national identities. The emergence of the figure of the radical, if not a unique invention of the 19th century alone, embodies many of the complex changes, attitudes and uncertainties of the century. The radical is a figure at the intersection of politics, activism, class, arts and culture. Radicals can be working-class agitators, artists with a fierce creative vision, or Russian anarchist terrorists.

In this Summer School seminar, we will explore 19th-century radicalism and its expressions in politics, society, literature and culture with a comparative transnational perspective. Students will be introduced to the major historical events and developments of the century, to the emerging ideas of the time, such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party, to the emerging underground journalism of anarchist magazines and newspapers including The Anarchist, Freedom and Freiheit, as well as to important literary representations of radicalism such as George Eliot’s Felix Holt: the Radical and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.

Students will learn to familiarise themselves with the causes and effects of important historical events and developments and their international impact, to analyse such events in a comparative manner, to analyse and interpret literary texts in their historical contexts, and to do digital archival research with 19th-century periodica.

The following novels will have to be purchased individually prior to the first session:

Joseph Conrad. The Secret Agent. Norton, 2017 (Norton Critical Editions).

George Eliot. Felix Holt: The Radical. Penguin Classics, 1995 or later.

William Morris. News from Nowhere. Penguin Classics, 1993 or later.

Suggested introductory reading:

Craig Calhoun. The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements. Chicago UP, 2012.

Timothy Morton (ed.). Radicalism in British Literary Culture, 1650-1830. Cambridge UP, 2002.

Personal attendance during the first session is required to maintain enrolment status.
Please direct all your inquiries about vacancies to britlit.fragen.fk15tu-dortmundde.