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Victorian Fiction

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Email course leader: john.drew@buckingham.ac.uk
One term (of 2): 15 units

This is part 1 of a 2-term course exploring the literature written between 1830 and 1900, known as the Victorian Age. It will introduce you to a range of texts produced in this period, relating them to an appropriate range of historical, cultural and aesthetic values. The course also aims to get you thinking, speaking and writing critically about these texts. Since asking questions is a key part of undergraduate study, in both parts of the course the following are the kinds of questions to be tackled:

In what ways did Victorian authors, both male and female, in poetry and prose, engage with the material and spiritual problems of their age?
Does Victorian literature always combine instruction with entertainment?
If poetry and prose fiction was an important constituent part of Victorian culture, in what ways does it criticise and / or transcend it?
To what extent, and how, do class and gender affect the forms and assumptions of Victorian literature?
Is the term 'Victorian' itself a useful one for identifying characteristics identifiable in all the works studied, or is it a smokescreen disguising serious differences (regional / racial, social, spiritual) of opinion?
To what extent do Victorian authors rely on visions of the past rather than on experience of the present or predictions of the future, for inspiration in their writing?

Authors studied on the course in recent years have included: Charles Dickens (Sketches by Boz, Hard Times, Great Expectations, Bleak House), Elizabeth Gaskell (short stories, North and South), Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre), Henry James (The Turn of the Screw), Thomas Hardy (short stories, Tess of the d'Urbervilles), Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray) and Joseph Conrad.

The course is assessed together with Victorian Poetry, by means of a term paper in each term (25% + 25%) and a Spring Term examination (50%).