LT307-6-SP-CO:
The Victorians: Writers and Society
PLEASE NOTE: This module is inactive. Visit the Module Directory to view modules and variants offered during the current academic year.
2023/24
Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies
Colchester Campus
Spring
Undergraduate: Level 6
Inactive
Monday 15 January 2024
Friday 22 March 2024
15
06 August 2019
Requisites for this module
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The Victorian period (1837-1901) covers sixty-four years of unprecedented vitality and change. Literature responded to developments in science and technology, urbanisation and the growth of industrial cities, matters relating to socio-economic class and gender, the expansion of the British Empire, anxieties about rural life, and transformations of writing styles. Publication during the Victorian years increasingly involved the world of magazines and newspapers, which meant that the public was reading an almost bewildering range of reviews. Novels were usually read in instalments. Poetry was concerned with loss, crises of belief, and the increasing alienation of the imagination in a materialist world.
We will read well known authors including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens, Alfred Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Hardy alongside equally interesting, less mainstream writers such as sensation novelist Ellen Wood and
fin de siecle poet A. E. Housman. We will rethink assumptions about the Victorians and their literature, and will consider how critical studies might be taken forwards in the 21st Century.
The aims of this module are:
• To provide a strongly supportive learning environment for students to study Victorian poetry and prose.
• To engage students with theories relevant to the study of Victorian writing.
• To enable students to take full advantage of the research expertise of the teacher.
• To prepare students for graduate study by providing them with research methods appropriate to enquiry into areas of knowledge.
• To enhance employability by providing transferable skills with practical applicability.
• To encourage life-long learning through a rigorous and focused programme of academic study.
By the end of the programme students will be able to:
• Demonstrate advanced understanding of key areas of Victorian writing.
• Demonstrate an advanced understanding of key theories of interpretation, and be able to apply these to a group of texts of the period.
• Display mastery of the complex cultural, historical, and social contexts that inform Victorian poetry and prose.
• Employ a range of self-directed research enquiries into literature of the Victorian Period.
• Present materials to peers and staff, utilising an advanced level of critical competence and presentational skills.
Transferable/Key Skills and other attributes:
Students taking the module will:
• Develop confidence and advanced skills in critical analysis and expository writing through the study of Victorian literature.
• Develop skills in using materials in databases, electronic archives, and library rare books resources, in addition to using more commonplace print sources.
• Develop advanced skills and confidence in presenting and discussing their work, orally and in writing.
Key texts:
Where no edition is specified, you may use any edition.
Required text: The Norton Anthology of English Literature: the Victorian Age. 9th Edition. Norton, 2012. (Texts marked with an asterisk below are included in this anthology.)
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, Aurora Leigh.*
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times.
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton.
Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native.
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Poems and prose.*
Housman, A. E. A Shropshire Lad.*
Ruskin, John. Sesame and Lilies.*
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. In Memoriam.*
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret.
Some shorter, extra materials will be provided electronically
Short critical bibliography:
Required text: The Norton Anthology of English Literature: the Victorian Age. 9th Edition. Norton, 2012.
Bristow, Joseph. The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.
Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. Becoming Dickens: the Invention of a Novelist. Cambridge, MA: Bellknap P of Harvard, 2011.
Moran, Maureen. Victorian Literature and Culture. London and New York: Continuum, 2006.
Ledger, Sally and Holly Furneaux, eds. Charles Dickens in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011.
Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor: a Selected Edition. Ed. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010.
Phillips, Catherine. Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Victorian Visual World. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.
Sussman, Herbert. Victorian Masculinities: Manhood and Masculine Poetics in Early Victorian Literature and Art. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 2008.
Journals:
Dickens Journals Online http://www.djo.org.uk
Nineteenth Century Contexts
Nineteenth Century Literature
Nineteenth Century Studies
Victorian Literature and Culture
Victorian Poetry
Victorian Review
Victorian Studies
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
Deadline |
Coursework weighting |
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr Christopher Bundock, email: christopher.bundock@essex.ac.uk.
Dr Christopher Bundock
LiFTS General Office - email liftstt@essex.ac.uk.
Telephone 01206 872626
Yes
Yes
No
No external examiner information available for this module.
Available via Moodle
Of 20 hours, 20 (100%) hours available to students:
0 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s).
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