British Literature and Culture in the Long 19th Century 3301-ZJ-WM-LK001
The lecture highlights major literary works produced in Britain from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, including such authors as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Emily Brontё, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells and Joseph Conrad. The selected works will be discussed in light of such issues as the publishing business; faith and doubt; “condition-of-England” themes; industrial culture; Darwinism; domesticity and gender roles; Victorian psychology; the Woman Question; race and empire; imperialism; sensation, the fantastic, and detection; religion and science; money, economy, and social class; 19th theories of the novel; education, literacy, and the Victorian reader; laws and politics; novelists and the stage. Additionally, the lecture covers the following aspects of narrative fiction and poetry:
• types of novel, subgenres of poetry (the Gothic, novel of manners, epistolary novel, the Newgate novel, realism, regional novel, Bildungsroman, sensation fiction, science fiction, the ballad, the dramatic monologue, the lyric)
• types of narration, focalization (point of view), character, setting, free indirect discourse
• the lyric and its speaker, speakers in the dramatic monologue, visual imagery, symbolism, figures of speech
The lecture is followed by a class workshop aimed at revising the knowledge and material from the lecture.
Literature:
Jane Austen (“Northanger Abbey,” “Emma”)
Mary Shelley (“Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus”)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” selected poetry)
Charles Dickens (“Oliver Twist”)
Alfred Tennyson (selected poetry)
Robert Browning (selected poetry)
Emily Brontё (“Wuthering Heights,” selected poetry)
Elizabeth Gaskell (“North and South”)
Robert Louis Stevenson (“The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”)
Oscar Wilde (“The Picture of Dorian Gray”)
Arthur Conan Doyle (“The Sign of Four”)
Thomas Hardy (“Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” selected poetry)
H. G. Wells (“The Time Machine”)
Joseph Conrad (“Heart of Darkness,” “The Secret Agent”)
MA programme
Type of course
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
Students will be able to:
K_W01: identify and characterize on an advanced level the place and status of the long 19th century literary and culture studies within the humanities
K_W02: describe on an advanced level the current trends in literary and cultural studies research of the long 19th century British literature and culture
Abilities
Students will be able to:
K_U03: apply knowledge obtained during the lecture to account for and solve a problem, thereby completing a research task (on the long 19th century literature and culture) related to the discipline literary studies and/or culture studies
K_U04: analyse literary and cultural phenomena and draw generalizations on their basis in the context of societal, historical and economic factors on an advanced level
Social Competences
Students will be ready to:
K_K04 assess critically one’s own knowledge and skills related to the lecture
K_K06 value cultural heritage and cultural diversity as well as individual opinions
Assessment criteria
Written exam at the end of the semester (the passing score: 60% of the total points possible)
The resit exam takes place during the resit examination session.
2 absences are allowed.
Bibliography
• Bevis, Matthew, ed. “The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry.” Oxford: OUP, 2013.
• Brantlinger, Patrick, and William A. Thesing, eds. “A Companion to the Victorian Novel.” Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.
• Bristow, Joseph, ed. “The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry.” Cambridge: CUP, 2006.
• Mahoney, Charles, ed. “A Companion to Romantic Poetry.” Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
• Maxwell, Richard, and Katie Trumpener, eds. “The Cambridge Companion to Fiction in the Romantic Period.” Cambridge: CUP, 2009.
• Leighton, Mary Elizabeth, and Lisa Surridge, eds. “The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Prose, 1832-1901.” Peterborough, Ont: Broadview, 2012.
• Sanders, Andrew. “The Short Oxford History of English Literature.” Oxford: OUP, 2004.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: