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ENGL 451: Hooligans & Gutter Children of Victoria Slums

This course will look at Victorian literature on working-class class & poor children. We will consider how the poor youth’s body was contested ground for cultural reformers interested in ridding the nation of urban problems such as crime and chronic unemployment.  We will look at representations of cross-class salvation in works by Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist) and R.M. Ballantyne (Dusty Diamonds), and we will also discuss moral education and Christian redemption in fiction by Charles Kingsley (Water Babies) and Hesba Stretton (Lost Gip). The majority of class discussion and readings will focus on Victorian debates regarding the ethics of youth education and social reform—questions about whom could be saved and how. We will compare novels by Clarence Rook (The Hooligan Nights) and Arthur Morrison (A Child of the Jago) with non-fictional writings by Reginald Bray and CFG Masterman on Victorian youths and gang violence. Our conversations will not be limited to bad boys; we will also look at fiction about delinquent or fallen girls, including works such as Margaret Harkness’s A City Girl and William Pett Ridge’s Mord Em’ly.