Module Aims
- Evaluate and analyse the literature of the ‘long nineteenth century,’ examining the complexity and variety of forms.
- Enable students to acquire a knowledge and understanding of individual texts rom this period through close reading and critical analysis.
- Explore the cultural and historical background which frames the emergence and development of writing from the period.
- Develop understanding of the impact of writing from this era of the development of English Literature, building on work undertaken Introduction to the Renaissance.
- Engage with a range of theoretical models as they apply to such issues as class, gender, identity, and styles of writing and reading, building on work undertaken Literary Theory.
- Develop and enhance research, writing and oral presentation skills.
- Enhance skills in assessing resources, in print and digital formats.
MODULE Content
This module will examine a selection of poems and novels from the late-eighteenth through to the Fin de Siècle, assessing the various literary styles that emerged in Romantic and Victorian contexts. The module will emphasise the radically innovative aspects of Romantic writing, both in expression and in thought and feeling, as well as assessing the impact of the ‘Gothic.’ We will also consider the development of the novel in the nineteenth century and the impact of other cultural debates on literary production.
You will be encouraged to consider the historical backgrounds and address the influence on literature of such features as political revolution, economic change, imperialism and urbanisation. We will, throughout this module, examine a selection of literature from a variety of genres, both fiction and nonfiction, emphasising the important historical and cultural contexts to form and structure. Texts, both canonical and non-canonical, will be considered in their own right and in their relationship to each other, to the wider cultural landscape of their production, and the relevance of such texts to contemporary events and debates.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module a student will be able to:
- Understand the development of literary output in the wider historical and cultural context.
- Read text closely and effectively to produce analytical and critical response to the literature studied.
- Understand and apply relevant theoretical approaches
- Produce clear and precise written and oral responses to the literature of the period
- Produce and apply thorough and relevant research relating to the literature of this period.
- Assess resources, both print and digital, for value and validity.
LEARNING, TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT
This module is delivered through a range of lecture, seminars, workshops and review session, including film showings and documentaries. We will also make use of online resources, including digital archives as primary resources, as well as scholarly articles for your research.
Lectures will foreground the wider theoretical and generic issues appropriate to the module, and seminars will follow up these issues with reference to specific texts (both primary and secondary), providing the opportunity for more detailed application and discussion of these debates.
Workshops will be an opportunity for you to participate in the delivery of learning information, through your own presentations and through informal exercises set by your tutor. In seminars and workshop sessions, you will be expected to offer opinions, listen to the opinions of others, and debate key points that enhance your understanding of the literary texts and its importance to academic study.
| Class & Grade | Relevance | Presentation | Analysis | Argument and Structure | Originality | Knowledge |
| 1 (outstanding)
70 or above | Directly relevant to the title; also able to address the implications, assumptions and nuances of the title. | Very well written with standard spelling and syntax, lucid and resourceful style, and appropriate format and bibliography. | Very good analysis of the evidence, arguments or other material considered, resulting in clear and illuminating conclusions. | Coherent and logically structured, making creative use of an appropriate mode of argument and / or theoretical model(s). | Distinctive work, showing independent thought and critical engagement with alternative views. | Makes effective use of an excellent knowledge and thorough understanding of relevant material. |
| 2.1 (above average)
60-69 | Directly relevant to the title. | Well written, with standard spelling and syntax, a readable style, and acceptable format and bibliography. | Good analysis, clear and orderly. | Generally coherent and logically structured, using appropriate mode of argument and / or theoretical model(s). | May contain some distinctive or independent thinking; may begin to formulate an independent position. | A substantial knowledge of relevant material, showing clear grasp of themes, questions and issues therein. |
| 2.2 (average)
50-59 | Some attempt to address the title; may drift away from the question or theme of the title in less focused passages. | Competently written, with only minor lapses in syntax and spelling, with acceptable format and bibliography. | Some analytical treatment, but may be prone to description or to narrative, which lacks clear analytical purpose. | Some attempt to construct a coherent argument, but may suffer loss of focus and consistency, with issues stated vaguely, or model(s) couched in simplistic terms. | Sound work which expresses a personal position only in broad terms and in uncritical conformity to one or more standard views of the topic. | Adequate knowledge of a fair range of relevant material, with intermittent evidence of an appreciation of its significance. |
| 3 (below average)
40-49 | Some significant degree of irrelevance to the title is common | Quite poorly written, with significant deficiencies in expression, format & bibliography that may hinder the reader. | Largely descriptive or narrative, with little evidence of analytical skill. | A basic argument may be evident, but tends to be supported by assertion only and to lack clarity and coherence. | Largely derivative; no personal view is adequately formed. | Basic understanding of a limited range of material. |
| Fail
0-39 | Insufficient relevance to the module requirements. | Substantially garbled and negligently presented. | Inadequate and often inaccurate description & paraphrase. | No evidence of coherent argument or structure. | No evidence of personal thought; cursory paraphrase / quotation. | Lack of basic knowledge necessary for understanding of the topic. |
5.1 Grading Bands
The University uses a grade band marking scale. This marking scale contains a fixed number of percentage points in each class band which might be assigned by a marker for a piece of assessed work. This is intended to encourage markers to make decisions about assessed work in relation to which class band it most appropriately belongs and encourage markers to use the full range of the marking scale. For certain modules, such as those subject to professional body requirements or those assessed solely numerically (e.g. multiple choice tests), the nature of the assessment will mean the mark should be recorded as a mark out of 100 and these marks would fall outside of the fixed percentage point bands.
The grading bands used by the University for year one of Foundation Entry Programmes are detailed below:
| Band | Numerical equivalent |
| Exceptional Distinction | 96 |
| High Distinction | 89 |
| Mid Distinction | 81 |
| Low Distinction | 74 |
| High Merit | 68 |
| Mid Merit | 65 |
| Low Merit | 62 |
| High Pass | 58 |
| Mid Pass | 52 |
| Low Pass | 45 |
| Marginal Fail | 35* |
| Mid Fail | 30* |
| Low Fail | 25 |
| Fail | 10 |
| Non-submission | 0 |
*can be compensated
Set Texts:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or ‘The Modern Prometheus’ (1818), Ed. Marilyn Butler, Oxford World’s Classics, 2008
Jane Austen Northanger Abbey (1818), in Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon, Ed. Claudia L. Johnson et al Oxford World’s Classics, 2008
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847), Ed. Margaret Smith et al, Oxford World’s Classics, 2008
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), ed. Andrew Sanders, Oxford World’s Classics, 2008
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), Ed. Simon Gatrell et al, Oxford World’s Classics, 2008
Poetry reading will be available on Blackboard.
All set texts should be read in advance of the sessions.
Suggested Reading:
Armstrong, Isobel. Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics, Politics. London: Routledge, 1993.
Bate, Jonathan. The Song of the Earth. London: Picador, 2000.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1970.
Botting, Fred. Gothic. London: Routledge, 1996.
Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Bristow, Joseph. The Victorian Poet: Poetics and Persona. London: Croom Helm, 1987.
Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. 1st publ.1790 (included in Duncan Wu’s anthology, Romanticism)
Butler, Marilyn. Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background, 1760-1830. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981.
Bygrave, Stephen, ed. Approaching Literature: Romantic Writings. London: Routledge, 1996.
Colley, Linda. Britons: The Forging of a Nation 1707-1837. London: Vintage, 1996
Cronin, Richard. The Politics of Romantic Poetry. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000.
David, Deirdre, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.
Day, Aidan, Romanticism. London: Routledge, 1996.
Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
Edmond, Rod. Affairs of the Hearth: Victorian Narrative Poetry and the Ideology of the Domestic. London: Routledge, 1988.
Everest, Kelvin. English Romantic Poetry. Milton Keynes Open UP, 1990.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, 1: An Introduction, London: Penguin, 1990.
Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination. New Edition. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005.
Gilmour, Robin. The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1830-1890. London: Longman, 1993.
Guy, Josephine. The Victorian Social Problem Novel. London: Longman, 1993.
Haberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
Kelly, G. English Fiction of the Romantic Period, 1788-1830. London: Longman, 1989.
Leighton, Angela, ed. Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992.
McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. NY: Routledge, 1995.
Mellor, Anne K. Romanticism and Gender. London: Routledge, 1993.
Morretti, Franco. Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of the Literary Form. London: Verso, 1988.
Paine, Tom. The Rights of Man. 1st publ. 1791. London: Penguin, 1985.
Pykett, Lyn. The Improper Feminine: the Women’s Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing. London: Routledge, 1992.
Richards, Bernard. English Poetry of the Victorian Period, 1830-1890. London: Longman, 1988.
Roe, Nicholas (ed) Romanticism: An Oxford Guide. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.
– The Politics of Nature. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
– John Keats. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012.
Rosenberg, John D. Elegy for an Age: The Presence of the Past in Victorian Literature. London, England: Anthem; 2005.
Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory, London: HarperCollins, 1995.
– A History of Britain, Volume III, London: BBC Books 2002.
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton University Press, 1982.
Stonyk, Margaret. Nineteenth Century English Literature. New York: Schockenn Books, 1984.
Terry, R. C. Victorian Popular Fiction, 1860-1880. London: Macmillan, 1983.
Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin, 1963.
– Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law, New York: New Press, 1995
Tucker, Herbert. A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
Ward, Geoff (ed). Romantic Literature From 1790 to 1830. London: Bloomsbury, 1993.
Watson, J. R. English Poetry of the Romantic Period, 1789-1830. London: Longman, 1985.
Wheeler, Michael. English Fiction of the Victorian Period. London: Longman, 1994.
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780-1950. London: Penguin, 1958.
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. 1958. London: Hogarth, 1987.
Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America 1780-1865. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. 1st publ 1792. (included in Wu)
Wu, Duncan (ed). A Companion to Romanticism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
– Romanticism: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
Wynne, Deborah. The Sensation Novel and the Victorian Family Magazine. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
From Romantics to Decadents: Literary Culture 1789-1900
Assignment One: PRESENTATION EXERCISE
Presentations offer you an opportunity to learn how to work together in a group, carry out research effectively and convey your ideas in a professional, authoritative manner. During the planning stages it is a good idea to discuss your plans and ideas with one of the module tutors, which will enhance your overall performance.
Normally a collective effort by three or four students, they should last for 15-20 minutes and should relate closely to concerns raised by authors and in texts studied in the sessions this semester. In addition to planning and researching your chosen subject for the presentation, you will be expected to produce material to invite follow-up questions and discussion.
Approximately half of each presentation should be devoted to a close reading of what you collectively regard as a key section in the text, and should demonstrate some awareness of theoretical and critical sources which your fellow students might want to follow up. If you want to use AV equipment, contact Technical Services on the 2nd floor of Harrington Building.
Try to present work which engages your audience fully, though avoid simplifying complex concerns in order to seem ‘accessible’. By involving members of the seminar group in your presentation, you will be helping them learn and develop an understanding of material explored in the module. And, by engaging other people in the class, they will be encouraged to do the same for you when they give their presentation.
Make sure you have time for a dry-run so that any possible technical problems can be identified.
Your group will be given a shared mark, therefore it is vital that you negotiate a fair division of labour and that each member contributes orally to the presentation. At the start of the presentation you should provide a handout, containing a bibliography of primary and critical sources consulted in preparation, a list of main quotations (if applicable) and a number of questions/issues for further discussion raised by the presentation.
The presentation will be assessed considering the following criteria:
- Overall Quality of Presentation and Contributions of individual group members;
- the Delivery, Quality and Coherence of Argument, including use of appropriately sophisticated, nuanced language
- the inventiveness and creativity displayed
- the use of source (primary and critical) materials
- the ability to provoke and respond to feedback
A copy of the presentation should also be submitted through turnitin: please remember to CITE YOUR SOURCES.
Possible Topics:
- The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in art and literature
- Dickens’ journals: Household Words and All the Year Round
- Melodrama: the theatre of blood and thunder
- Pre- Raphaelite art
- Queen Victoria, Empress of India: Colonialism in art and literature
- Separate Spheres: ‘A woman’s place is in the home’
Before your group commits to a topic, please ask one of your module tutors to confirm it is a suitable and viable one.
