Questioning the Victorians: Texts, Contexts & Afterlives - ENG00029M
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 1 2025-26 |
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.
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
You will receive feedback on all assessed work within the University deadline, and will often receive it more quickly. The purpose of feedback is to inform your future work; it is designed to help you to improve your work, and the Department also offers you help in learning from your feedback. If you do not understand your feedback or want to talk about your ideas further you can discuss it with your module tutor, the MA Convenor or your supervisor, during their Consultation & Feedback Hours.
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.1 27
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, Marx s 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).