Undergraduate Course: Modern Love: Victorian Poetry and Prose. (ENLI10370)
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 | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Modern ideas of 'Victorian values' depend upon clichés and distortions of Victorian ideas of love: reverence for the nuclear family combined with prudishness and prurience; marriage plots, covered table-legs and scandal sheets publishing the dirty secrets of the divorce courts. This course offers students the opportunity to discover the complex and diverse forms of Victorian interpersonal relationship, through close examination of a range of poetry, prose and drama. |
| Course description |
Modern ideas of 'Victorian values' depend upon clichés and distortions of Victorian ideas of love: reverence for the nuclear family combined with prudishness and prurience; marriage plots, covered table-legs and scandal sheets publishing the dirty secrets of the divorce courts. This course offers students the opportunity to discover the complex and diverse forms of Victorian interpersonal relationship, through close examination of a range of poetry, prose and drama. Prudes, perverts, and perfect families will be encountered, but so too will bigamists, emancipated women, loving and unloving patrons, unhappy families, passionate friendships, failed marriages, and families of choice. The construction and subversion of gender norms, and the impact of factors such as class, education, locale, and religion on the way love is understood as normative or perverse, will be major themes of the course.
|
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
|
Quota: 36 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
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 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
2000 word coursework essay (30%) submitted mid-semester;
plus 3000 word final essay submitted during exam period (70%).
|
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- To demonstrate competence in essay-writing
- To carry out independent reading in Victorian literature and criticism of Victorian literature
- To collaborate with peers in group work
- To analyse critically Victorian poetry and prose
- To show knowledge of, and critically reflect on, the historical contexts of, and recent critical debates about, Victorian literature
|
Reading List
- Robert Browning, 'The Statue and the Bust'; Matthew Arnold, 'Isolation. To Marguerite' and 'To Marguerite - Continued'; Alfred Lord Tennyson, 'Rizpah'; Christina Rossetti, 'Passing Away, Saith the World' (all available on LEARN)
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1857) (Norton)
- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860) (Norton)
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1860-1) (Norton)
- William Morris, 'The Defence of Guenevere'; Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 'Nuptial Sleep'; Algernon Charles Swinburne, 'Dolores (Our Lady of Pain)'; Michael Field, 'Long Ago, LIV' (all available on LEARN).
- George Meredith, Modern Love (1862) (Yale University Press edition: access via LEARN or DiscoverEd)
- George Gissing, New Grub Street (1891) (Oxford)
|
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Owen Holland
Tel:
Email: owen.holland@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Lina Gordyshevskaya
Tel:
Email: pgordysh@ed.ac.uk |
|
|
University Homepage