Victorian Literature 1832-1901
Credits: 40 credits
Module Director: Dr Peter Merchant
Please note: This is a 40-credit module. Because it carries double the usual number of credits, the workload and the attendance requirement will be twice that of all other Year 2 English modules. There will be two 2-hour seminars per week. Since only 20 credits of failure can be permitted at any one Level, you must pass this module in order to progress to Year 3.
This double module aims to make students enthusiastic, informed and discriminating readers of Victorian literature. It introduces them to aspects of Victorian culture and society wherever these are needed to underpin and enhance that experience. As it examines a range of texts which in various ways represent the period, and considers their social and cultural contexts, the module draws upon a wide variety of critical and theoretical approaches suitable for students to adopt and apply.
Since the novel is the dominant literary genre of the Victorian age, and the love of stories and of storytelling characterises this period as much as does the rise (and arousal) of social concern, the list of prescribed texts is likely to include a generous measure of classic fiction; students can expect to work on such figures as Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, George Moore, and Thomas Hardy. Coverage of other genres (poetry, drama and non-fictional prose) is also a requirement, and a paperback anthology is the one-stop shop which caters conveniently for that. Above all, students can expect to be surprised into a sense of the infinite variety of a period too often dismissed as staid and static; it is in fact an age that sees convulsive change—“this live, throbbing age,” as Elizabeth Barrett Browning terms it—and Victorian literature reflects all of this thrillingly.
Assessment is by a) two 2,500-word coursework portfolios, with each containing a 500-word essay (5%) on a short prescribed passage and a 2,000-word essay (20%) on at least one complete text, and b) two examination papers. Each paper will require two answers, and will account for 25% of the total module mark. One of the two papers will be invigilated and closed-book; and the other will be a ‘takeaway’ paper that students can spread over days rather than hours, with the opportunity to look up what they like.