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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Postgraduate Course: Charles Dickens (ENLI11072)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
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. 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.

*This course is taught jointly with undergraduate students and consequently postgraduate places are limited
Course description 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.

*This course is taught jointly with undergraduate students and consequently postgraduate places are limited
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements Students on LLC MSc programmes get first priority to this course. If you are not on an LLC programme, please let your administrator or the course administrator know you are interested in the course. Unauthorised enrolments will be removed. No auditors are permitted.
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  3
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 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) One 4,000 word essay to be submitted as specified in the programme handbook or by the supervisor
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
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
Reading List
None
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Special Arrangements Jointly taught with undergraduate students ENLI10255
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Jonathan Wild
Tel: (0131 6)51 3191
Email: J.Wild@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Hope Hamilton
Tel: (0131 6)50 4167
Email: hope.hamilton@ed.ac.uk
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