Victorian Literature

Core course 1: Genres and Canons

Tutors: Dr Rhian Williams & Dr Andrew Radford, with members of the department
Course Type: Core
Scheduled: Semester 1, Tuesdays 5-6.30pm

Course description

The first core course will introduce you to different types of writing that circulated in Victorian literary culture. We begin with a selection of extracts from texts published during and after the Victorian period. We will consider how these seek to characterise the age - its writing, its values, trends, cultures and reputation. We will use these to debate the possibility of 'Victorian' as a genre itself. From here we go on to look at some of the representative writing modes from the period, thinking about how Victorian writers tested and interrogated the potential in traditional forms, and how they developed new and compelling ones of their own.

Core Reading

• Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
• Anthony Trollope, The Warden
• Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
• Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H.
• Matthew Arnold, The Scholar Gypsy, Thyrsis
• Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Ave Atque Vale"
• Thomas Babington Macaulay, 'Milton'
• Thomas Carlyle, 'On History'
• Matthew Arnold, 'Pagan and Medieval Religious Sentiment'
• Robert Louis Stevenson, selected essays 
• Mary Braddon, Aurora Floyd
• Rhoda Broughton, Cometh Up as a Flower
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The House of Life
• Christina Rossetti, Monna Innominata
• George Meredith, Modern Love
• Gerard Manley Hopkins, the ‘Terrible Sonnets’
• George Egerton, 'A Cross Line'
• Henry James, 'The Author of Beltraffio'
• Wilkie Collins, 'The Guilty River'
• William Brough, Perdita, or the Royal Milkmaid
• Tom Taylor, The House or the Home?
• Arthur W. Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray
• Marie Corelli, Sorrows of Satan

Victorian Literature

Core course 2: Victorian Literary History

Tutors: Dr Rhian Williams and members of the teaching team
Course Type: Core
Scheduled: Semester 2, Tuesdays 5-6.30pm

Course Description

Following on from Core Course 1's exploration of writing types, Core Course 2 identifies significant 'historical flashpoints' from across the Victorian period, and selects a cluster of texts that respond to an event or its legacy and effect. During discussion, students should consider how different types of writing stage complexly different responses to these significant events and developments. The notion of a 'historical flashpoint' reflects how any mode of cultural production exists within a specific moment and should be scrutinised with its contexts and chronologies clearly in view. Historical knowledge is a crucial tool in gauging the importance of any literary artefact, whether at the stage of first publication or in the shifting processes of its consumption and interpretation thereafter.

Core Reading

• George Eliot, Middlemarch
• Charlotte Bronte, Villette
• Douglas Jerrold, The Rent Day
• Arthur Hugh Clough, Amours de Voyage
• Alfred Tennyson, 'The Palace of Art'
• Robert Browning, 'Love Among the Ruins'
• Richard Marsh, The Beetle
• George Moore, Esther Waters
• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
• Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills
• Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H.
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret
• H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines
• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
• Richard Jeffries, After London
• H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
• For week 9 we recommend that you read one of Emile Zola's novels that would be familiar in translation to late-century readers, such as The Belly of Paris or L'Assomoir

Historical Flashpoints

• The Reform Acts (1832; 1867)
• Opening of Pentonville Prison (1842)
• Scientific Criticism
• The Great Exhibition (1850)
• The Indian Mutiny (1857)
• Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species (1859)
• Transport: Opening of the Metropolitan Line (1863); legacy of opening the Great Hall, Euston Station (1849)
• Scramble for Africa
• 2nd Vizetelly Trial (1889)
• End of Queen Victoria's Reign (1901)