| Unit name | Victorian Literature and Place |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGLM0034 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Bennett |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
The unit introduces students to primary and secondary texts addressing central questions about urbanisation and changing conceptions of place in Victorian literature. Issues studied may include urban growth, industrialisation, rural depopulation, poverty, democracy and education, gender and identity politics, consumerism and imperialism. Realist, gothic, pastoral, and apocalyptic literary modes may be explored. Primary texts focus on specific cities, such as London, Manchester, Rome or New York, and broader notions of place, environment and setting.
The unit aims to: develop students’ awareness of the variety of Victorian writing about place; introduce relevant literary genres, traditions, conventions and motifs; contextualise Victorian writing about place in relation to major currents in history, theory and cultural study; enable students to discuss and write about at a mature level Victorian literary works on urban and rural locations in Britain and the wider world; develop existing skills through independent reading, research and writing.
1. A broadened experience of the range and variety of Victorian writing about place.
2. Improved independent critical thinking about urban and rural traditions, conventions and motifs in Victorian literature.
3. A maturing ability to apply critical and cultural contexts to the discussion of Victorian literature focusing on London, the new industrial cities, and rural locations.
4. Developing an appropriate style of critical writing for the discussion and analysis of literary works in relation to relevant contexts.
5. Improving existing skills through independent reading, research and writing on defined texts and topics.
Teaching will be delivered through a combination of synchronous and asynchronous activities. These can include seminars, lectures, class discussions, formative tasks, small groupwork and self-directed exercises.
1 x 4000 word summative assignment (100%) [ILOs 1-5] 1000 word presentation
Tim Cresswell, Place: An Introduction, 2nd edn (London: Wiley Blackwell, 2015)
H.J. Dyos, and Michael Wolff (eds.), The Victorian City: Images and Realities. 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973)
Elizabeth K. Helsinger, Rural Scenes and National Representation: Britain, 1815-1850 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)
Joseph McLaughlin, Reading Empire in London from Doyle to Eliot (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000)
Ralph Pite, Hardy’s Geography: Wessex and the Regional Novel (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002)
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
