Charles Dickens (U03289)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 10 ? Acronym : LLC-4-U03289

This course involves a close and concentrated reading of a selection of Dickens's writing spanning his career. It looks at the ways in which Dickens's understanding of the novel form developed, moving from the energetic sentimentalism of the early work to the much more controlled and sophisticated layering of a book like Great Expectations. The course is designed to explore questions of narratology, and will engage with both recent and influential accounts of Dickens's formal experimentation (J. Hillis Miller, D. A. Miller, Peter Brooks, for example). We'll discuss the extent to which Dickens has become the definitive Victorian novelist, and consider the ways in which his writing might also point towards later, post-Victorian developments in the novel. The course also examines aspects of the material and social culture in and about which Dickens writes, including the impact of serial publication on ideas of authorship, the pervasiveness of ideologies of domesticity in his work, his response to the United States, and the tension in his writing between social radicalism and forms of political conservatism. Students will be able to concentrate intensively on an author whose centrality to Victorian culture and to histories of the novel as a mode of textual practice allows for a wide range of critical and theoretical approaches.

Entry Requirements

? This course is not available to visting students.

? Pre-requisites : Passes in English or Scottish Literture 1 and English or Scottish or American Literature 2, with a mark of 50 or above at the first attempt. Passes in third year courses in the subject area amounting to at least 40 credits.

? Special Arrangements for Entry : Numbers are limited and students taking degrees not involving English or Scottish literature need the written approval of the head of English Literature.

? Costs : Essential course texts.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

English Literature, (School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, Schedule G)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 4th year

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

? Other Required Attendance : 1 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Friday	09:00	10:50	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course students will be able to:

- demonstrate a good knowledge of the writing career of Charles Dickens;
- show an awareness of issues of narrative style and narrative theory as they pertain to his work;
- demonstrate a familiarity with a variety of the historical and contextual contexts that inform Dickens's prose;
- assess the impact of Dickens's writing in his own cultural moment and in a post-Victorian age