Undergraduate Course: Charles Dickens (ENLI10255)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | 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. |
| Course description |
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.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2022/23, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 15 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
196 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
One course essay of 2,500 words (40%);
One final essay of 3,000 words (60%)
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| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student 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
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Reading List
Primary texts:
Oliver Twist (1837-9)
American Notes (1842)
David Copperfield (1849-50)
Bleak House (1852-3)
Hard Times (1854)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Great Expectations (1860-1)
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Additional Information
| Course URL |
https://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/current/honours |
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Special Arrangements |
Numbers are limited and students taking degrees not involving English or Scottish literature need the written approval of the head of English Literature. |
| Additional Class Delivery Information |
Seminar: 2 hours per week for 10 weeks;
plus attendance at Autonomous Learning Group for one hour each week - at time to be arranged. |
| Keywords | ENLI Charles Dickens |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Jonathan Wild
Tel: (0131 6)51 3191
Email: J.Wild@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms June Cahongo
Tel: (0131 6)50 3620
Email: J.Cahongo@ed.ac.uk |
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