Literature and Culture of the 19th Century Britain

obligatory courses

The lecture highlights major literary works produced in Britain from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century including such authors as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, George Gordon Byron, Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Emily Brontё, Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells and Joseph Conrad. The selected works will be discussed in light of such issues as genre; the publishing business; faith and doubt; “condition-of-England” themes; industrial culture; Darwinism; domesticity and gender roles; Victorian psychology; the Woman Question; race and empire; imperialism; sensation, the fantastic and detection; religion and science; money, economy and social class; Victorian theories of the novel; education, literacy and the Victorian reader; laws and politics; novelists and the stage.

The lecture highlights major literary works produced in Britain from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century including such authors as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, George Gordon Byron, Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Emily Brontё, Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells and Joseph Conrad. The selected works will be discussed in light of such issues as genre; the publishing business; faith and doubt; “condition-of-England” themes; industrial culture; Darwinism; domesticity and gender roles; Victorian psychology; the Woman Question; race and empire; imperialism; sensation, the fantastic and detection; religion and science; money, economy and social class; Victorian theories of the novel; education, literacy and Victorian reader; laws and politics; novelists and the stage.

Literature:

Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey, Emma)

Mary Shelley (Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus)

Lord Byron (Don Juan)

Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, The Mystery of Edwin Drood)

Alfred Tennyson (selected poetry)

Robert Browning (selected poetry)

Emily Brontё (Wuthering Heights)

Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South)

Robert Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)

Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four)

Thomas Hardy (Tess of the d’Urbervilles, selected poetry)

H. G. Wells (The Island of Doctor Moreau)

Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent)

• Bevis, Matthew, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry. Oxford: OUP, 2013.

• Brantlinger, Patrick, and William A. Thesing, eds. A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002.

• Bristow, Joseph, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry. Cambridge: CUP, 2006.

• Mahoney, Charles, ed. A Companion to Romantic Poetry. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

• Maxwell, Richard, and Katie Trumpener, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Fiction in the Romantic Period. Cambridge: CUP, 2009.

• Leighton, Mary Elizabeth, and Lisa Surridge, eds. The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Prose, 1832-1901. Peterborough, Ont: Broadview, 2012.

• Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

Knowledge

Students will be able to:

K_W01: identify and characterize on an advanced level the place and status of the 19th century literary and culture studies within the humanities

K_W02: describe on an advanced level the current trends in literary and cultural studies research of the long 19th century British literature and culture

Abilities

Students will be able to:

K_U03: apply knowledge obtained during the lecture to account for and solve a problem, thereby completing a research task on 19th century literature and culture related to the discipline literary studies and/or culture studies

K_U04: analyse literary and cultural phenomena and draw generalizations on their basis in the context of societal, historical and economic factors on an advanced level

Written exam at the end of the semester via the Moodle platform (the passing score: 60% of the total points possible)

The resit exam takes place during the resit examination session via the Moodle platform.