Course Catalogue

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This course focuses on the afterlife of Victorian literature and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by exploring issues of appropriation, adaptation and commodification. Students will be able to trace literary engagement with the Victorian novel (and other genres) from postmodernist and feminist reworkings in the 1960s and 1970s, to queer rewritings in the early twenty-first century and the current vogue for detective fiction, romance novels and fantasy fiction set in Victorian times. 

10 weekly 2 hour seminars as scheduled on MyCampus.

Standard entry to Masters at College level.

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The standard assessments for this course are:

■ One essay of 4,000 words (80%); 

■ One presentation of 20 minutes (20%). 

If required, for instance where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, the following alternatives are available:

■ recorded presentation (video or audio) or one-to-one presentation with staff as an alternative to the Presentation. 

■ There is no alternative to the essay, but extensions to the deadlines can be offered as reasonable adjustment (students should follow the usual process for extensions). 

Further reasonable adjustments may be provided where necessary. Students are encouraged to consult with the course convenor.

This course aims to:

- broaden students' knowledge of the impact of Victorian literature and culture on the late twentieth and twenty-first century.
- introduce students to competing theories of postmodernity, particularly in relation to appropriation, pastiche and parody.
- reinforce students' involvement in interdisciplinary study, and to

- encourage students to engage critically with popular fiction and other forms of media (e.g. film, graphic novels)
- enhance students' awareness of changing constructions of Victorian literature and culture over time, and hence to lead them to interrogate their own conceptions of the period.
- encourage independent research into a rapidly developing field, in particular through using electronic resources.

By the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Reflect critically upon theoretical models for the interpretation of Victorian literature.
- Identify and analyse a wide variety of twentieth and twentieth-century reworkings of Victorian texts.
- Explain critical developments in the study of Victorian literature and history, and judge the impact of these developments on changing attitudes towards the Victorian period.
- Evaluate the trajectory of 'neovictorianism' from the 1960s to the present day, and assess the relation of neovictorian texts to their historical and cultural contexts.
- Pursue independent interdisciplinary research, including using critical tools to analyse non-literary sources (e.g. graphic novels and other artworks, fashion, cinema).