Postgraduate Course: Romanticism and Victorian Society 1815-1900 (ENLI11141)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | English Literature |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | This course picks up the strands of the semester 1 course on 'Enlightenment and Romanticism' - political economy, the nation, gender and class hierarchies - and takes them forward into the nineteenth century. It traces their ramifications across a wide range of genres, and introduces students to the complexities of the interaction between literary and cultural formations in the Romantic and Victorian periods. The course is divided thematically rather than chronologically into four major sections which focus on, respectively, the social contexts of the changing relationship between men and women; the formulation of national histories and myths of England, Scotland and Ireland; the close interdependence between religion and science; and the engagement with capitalism, industrialisation and empire of prominent writers and public intellectuals, both radical and conservative. In each of these sections, established literary genres such as the novel, the romance, the epic, the lyric and the drama (as well as short stories, fairy tales, utopias, and modes ranging from the Gothic to the naturalistic) are brought into dialogue with 'non-literary' forms such as historical and economic treatises, polemical essays and scientific lectures, in order to assess both the modifications each undergoes in response to the other, and the ways they reflect and in their turn influence social reality. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | No |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2013/14 Semester 2, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Learn enabled: Yes |
Quota: None |
Web Timetable |
Web Timetable |
| Course Start Date |
14/01/2014 |
| Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Please contact the School directly for a breakdown of Learning and Teaching Activities |
| Additional Notes |
|
| Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) |
Please contact the School directly for a breakdown of Assessment Methods
|
| No Exam Information |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
* an understanding of how literary writing documents and mediates national, imperial, gender, class and religious identities from the end of the French wars in 1815 to the turn of the century.
* an understanding of the social agency of literary writing in the period. |
Assessment Information
| 4000 Word Essay (100%) |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Aims and Objectives
* to attempt to understand textual production in relation to social formations and their conceptualisation.
* to consider how ideas developed in political or historical discourses might borrow from and contribute to literary writing.
* to evaluate the ways in which literary writing changed in response to social, political, and scientific developments over the course of the nineteenth century. |
| Syllabus |
Gender Troubles
1. Love and Irony
Lord Byron, 'Don Juan' Cantos I - V (1819, 1821)
Caroline Lamb, 'A New Canto' (1819)
2. Old and New Women
Lucy Aikin, 'Epistles on Women' (1810): Introduction and Epistle I
J. S. Mill, 'The Subjection of Women' (1869)
G.B. Shaw, 'Mrs Warren's Profession' (1893)
National Histories, National Myths
3. English Romance
Walter Scott, 'Ivanhoe' (1819) and 'An Essay on Romance' (1824)
E. A. Freeman, 'The History of the Norman Conquest of England' (1867):
Introduction
4. Scottish and Irish Folklore
Walter Scott, 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border' (1802/1833):
'Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry', 'Introduction to the Tale of Tamlane', 'The Young Tamlane', 'Thomas the Rhymer'
George Douglas, 'Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales' (1901): Introduction
W. B. Yeats, 'The Wanderings of Oisin' (1889); 'Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry' (1888): Introduction; and 'The Celtic Twilight' (1893, 1902): Preface and 'A Teller of Tales'
Science and Religion
5. The Gothic Prometheus
Humphry Davy, 'A Discourse Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry' (1802)
P. B. Shelley, 'Alastor' (1816)
Mary Shelley, 'Frankenstein' (1831) (Penguin edition with appendices)
6. God, Nature and Evolution
Charles Darwin, extracts from 'The Descent of Man' (1871)
T. H. Huxley, 'Evolution and Ethics' (1893)
H.G. Wells, 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' (1893)
7. Faith and Doubt
Alfred Tennyson, 'In Memoriam' (1850) and selected poems
Selected poems by Robert Browning and G. M. Hopkins
Social Criticism
8. Reform and Revolution
Thomas Carlyle, 'Signs of the Times' (1829)
John Ruskin, 'Unto This Last' (1862)
William Morris, 'News from Nowhere' (1891)
9. Poverty and Class
Friedrich Engels, extracts from 'The Condition of the Working Class in England' (1845)
Henry Mayhew, extracts from 'London Labour and the London Poor' (1851)
Arthur Morrison, 'Tales of the Mean Streets' (1894)
10. Empire
Selections from 'Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature, 1870-1918'. Ed. Elleke Boehmer (Oxford) by Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Leonard Woolf and others |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
* Abrams, M.H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York: Norton, 1971.
* Anger, Suzy. Knowing the Past: Victorian Literature and Culture.
Ithaca NY: Cornell UP, 2001.
* Baldick, Chris. The Social Mission of English Criticism. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1983.
* Chandler, James. England in 1819: the Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
* Chaudhry, Yug. Yeats, the Irish Literary Revival, and the Politics of Print. Cork: Cork University Press, 2001.
* Collini, Stefan. Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850-1930. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
* Duncan, Ian. Modern Romance and Transformations of the Novel: the Gothic, Scott, Dickens. Cambridge: CUP, 1992.
* Helfer, Martha B. Rereading Romanticism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000.
* Howes, Marjorie Elizabeth. Yeats's Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
* Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Vintage, 1996.
* Lee, Yoon Sun. Nationalism and Irony: Burke, Scott, Carlyle. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004.
* Wilt, Judith. Secret Leaves: The Novels of Walter Scott. Chicago IL:
Chicago University Press, 1985. |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | RaVS |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Anna Vaninskaya
Tel: (0131 6)50 4284
Email: avaninsk@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Gordon Littlejohn
Tel: (0131 6)51 3988
Email: Gordon.Littlejohn@ed.ac.uk |
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