This course deals with both literary and cultural developments that shaped the Victorian Age. The choice of texts will include a variety of narrative traditions ranging from realism to the sensation novel. Moreover, Pre-Raphaelite poetry will also be addressed. The following topics will come under scrutiny: gender relations and conceptions of the family, the social question, political movements and the consequences of imperial expansion as well as modernisation and urbanization and their impact on different literary genres of the time. Since the course requires substantial reading, it is necessary that students read as many of the set texts as possible before the beginning of the semester. A reader with further material and poetry will be provided at the beginning of the class. The accompanying Lektürekurs will provide more room for in-depth reading of theoretical materials. A main focus is on the construction of the Victorian family. Texts include: M. Foucault’s The Will to Knowledge (The History of Sexuality I) und F. Engels’ The Origin of the Family (A second reader will be provided). Texts: (please only use critical editions such as Penguin Classics or Oxford World’s Classics) Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre George Eliot: Middlemarch Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White Selected Poems (will be provided in the reader) |
