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Questioning the Victorians: Texts, Contexts & Afterlives - ENG00029M

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  • Department: English and Related Literature
  • Module co-ordinator: Information currently unavailable
  • Credit value: 20 credits
  • Credit level: M
  • Academic year of delivery: 2023-24

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching cycle
A Semester 1 2023-24

Module aims

The module surveys the major literary and cultural developments in the period and the central preoccupations of Victorian writing, as formulated by contemporaries and by recent critics and theorists. It introduces key thematic areas and problems in the interpretation of nineteenth-century literature across a broad range of genres. It aims to give a good grounding in: (i) A representative range of Victorian literature; (ii) the political, social and aesthetic contexts of Victorian writing in Britain during this period; (iii) a variety of different perspectives on the historical construction of Victorian literature and culture.

Module learning outcomes

Subject content:

An understanding of (i) the engagement of Victorian literature with a range of political, social and aesthetic issues in the period (ii) the cultural meanings and associations of the variety of styles and genres in which Victorian literature was produced; (iii) a range of different critical perspectives about Victorian literature.

Assessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
4,500 word essay		 N/A 100

Special assessment rules

None

Reassessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
4,500 word essay		 N/A 100

Module feedback

For more information about the feedback you will receive for your work, see section 12 of the department's Guide to Assessment (PDF , 1,244kb).

Indicative reading

Thomas Hood Copyright and Copywrong (1837)

Thomas Carlyle The Hero as Man of Letters (delivered 1840, pub. 1841)

Anthony Trollope The Panjandrum (1870)

Henry James The figure in the carpet (1896)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia U.P., 1985) esp. pp.127

Epistemology of the Closet (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994), esp. pp. 1-90.

Charles Dickens, Two Views of a Cheap Theatre in The Uncommercial Traveller.

Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination (1976),

Elaine Hadley, Melodramatic Tactics (1995)

Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx (London: Routledge, 1994) exordium and chs 1 and 3.

Karl Marx The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoelon Bonaparte , in Surveys from Exile ed. David Fernbach, especially sections 1 and 7

Peter Stallybrass, Marxs coat in Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces, ed. Patricia Spyer (London: Routledge, 1998), 183-207.

David Livingstone, 'Cambridge Lecture no.1' (1858) in Imperialism and Orientalism: A Documentary Sourcebook, ed. Barbara Harlow and Mia Carter (Blackwell, 1999)

John Ruskin, 'Inaugural Lecture' (1870)

Blanchard Jerrold, 'Whitechapel and Thereabouts', from London: A Pilgrimage

(1872)

Edward Wilmot Blyden, 'The Aims and Methods of a Liberal Education for Africans' (1881) in Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Writing, 1870-1918, ed. Elleke Boehmer (Oxford World's Classics, 1998).

General William Booth, 'Why "Darkest England?"' (1890) in Imperialism and Orientalism: A Documentary Sourcebook, ed. Barbara Harlow and Mia Carter (Blackwell, 1999)

Joseph Conrad, 'An Outpost of Progress' (1898) in Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Writing, 1870-1918, ed. Elleke Boehmer (Oxford World's Classics, 1998).

Rudyard Kipling, 'The White Man's Burden' (1899) in Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Writing, 1870-1918, ed. Elleke Boehmer (Oxford World's Classics, 1998).


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University is constantly exploring ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary by the University. Where appropriate, the University will notify and consult with affected students in advance about any changes that are required in line with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.