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ENGL 203: Victorian Literature

Course Aims and Objectives:
Between 1830 and 1900 Britain changed radically and rapidly. Industrialisation and urbanisation transformed economic and social conditions and changed ideas about politics, class, and gender roles. Scientific developments appeared to call into question long-established beliefs about God and human nature. Victorian literature is in large part a response to these changes. This course introduces a wide range of Victorian literature (poetry, novels, short stories, prose essays, drama and children’s literature) and of rhetorical modes (sensational, sentimental, comic, tragic, Gothic, nonsensical, polemical, didactic) addressing a variety of issues, including politics, class, economic conditions, social organisation, gender, sexuality, childhood, race, colonialism, empire, war, nation, rural and urban living, science, religion, madness, the supernatural, Victorian views of the historical and personal pasts and Victorian visions of the future.

Assessment:
1 x in-class test (10%); 1 x 2,000-word essay (30%); 1 x 2.5 hours final examination (60%).

Submission Deadlines:
In-class test = during lecture session, Week 10/Term 1
Essay = by 12 noon, Monday Week 10/Term 2

Contact:
1 lecture, 1 seminar per week.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, successful students will have developed skills in the close analysis of literary texts and the development of critical argumentation, learned to use secondary sources for essays and exams, and begun to grasp the complex relationships between literary works and their historical contexts.

Set Texts:
T.J. Collins & V.J. Rundle (eds), The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory: Concise Edition.
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
George Eliot, Adam Bede
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Mary Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There
Roger Luckhurst (ed.), Late Victorian Gothic Tales
William Morris, News From Nowhere
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

For further reading, including texts by women travel writers, see the course LUVLE site.

Lecturers: AWT = Dr Andrew Tate; CLS = Dr Catherine Spooner; JC = Dr Jo Carruthers; KAH = Professor Keith Hanley; KLE = Dr Kamilla Elliott; SJS = Prof John Schad; TE: Prof Terry Eagleton; TP = Mr Tony Pinkney.

Term 2

Term 3

Back to: ENGL 202

Forward to: ENGL 204

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