ENG 378, 379 - The Death of the Sun

1 course unit

The Victorian social and cultural imagination was charged by the advent of two new sciences: energy physics and evolutionary biology. Together, these formed the basis of modern ecology, but among Victorians, they fueled and were shaped by the hopes and fears of a nation coping with change. Fears regarding the death of the sun competed with deeply held beliefs about conservation as well as with the hope for unlimited progress. This course explores the ways Victorian literature wrestled with and helped shape the way we understand ourselves and the natural world, evolving modern conceptions of energy, conservation, and entropy, from the roots of the term “energy” in Romantic poetry and in social thought to the late century fixation on inevitable decay. Authors read include Tennyson, Wells, Dickens, Hopkins, Gaskell, Stoker, and others.
Meets departmental Texts/Contexts approach.
Meets general academic requirement W when offered as 379.