ENG 378, 379 - The Death of the Sun: Energy, Elegy, & Empire in Victorian Literature

1 course unit

Scholars interested in the relation between science and literature have painted a rich picture of Darwin’s century-a time when the social and cultural imagination is dominated by evolutionary biology. But the Victorians had a lot on their minds, and biology was not their only science. Fears regarding the death of the sun-the extinction of light and life in what was known as the “heat death” of the universe-suffused Victorian intellectual and popular thought, and these fears were fueled by a new science: the science of energy. This course explores the ways the ideas of this new science shaped and were shaped by nineteenth century literature. We consider the roots of the term “energy” in Romantic poetry and in social thought, as well as the ways a strong religious impulse-the belief that only God can destroy or create-led to the idea of “the conservation of energy.” We consider how the idea of conservation went hand-in-hand with widespread anxieties about loss, decay, and disorder-or what would come to be called “entropy.” Texts may include Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam; H.G. Wells, The Time Machine; Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities; Bram Stoker, Dracula; Balfour Stewart and Norman Lockyer, “The Sun as a Type of the Material Universe.”
Meets departmental Texts/Contexts approach.
Meets general academic requirement W when offered as 379.