Victorian Literature

The Victorian period was one of extraordinary achievement and activity in the literary field, fostered by increasing literacy rates, the expansion of circulating libraries and a proliferation of weekly periodicals, all of which served to make literature more accessible as the nineteenth century progressed. In this course we will read a variety of Victorian texts in the context of nineteenth-century anxieties and discourses about sexual transgression, gender roles, disease, madness, spiritualism, the experience of modernity and the problem of the body. We will read a range of literary forms including novels, novellas, short stories, plays and poetry, and both canonical and non-canonical texts, enabling us to understand the breadth of Victorian writers' achievement and the way that Victorian literature both participated in and emerged from debates in other cultural discourses such as medicine, psychology, sociology and philosophy. The inclusion of texts from other areas of Europe, Australia and America may provide the opportunity to test the connotations and the limits of the term "Victorian" as a lens through which to study the output of this productive period. In this course, students will attend weekly lectures and tutorials. Lectures are 2 hours long and focus on a range of Victorian texts along with critical and contextual ideas related to the study of these texts. Tutorials are 1 hour long and offer students the opportunity to discuss the key texts and critical readings that are set for each week. The assessments for the course give students the opportunity to showcase their research, critical thinking and writing skills. This will typically take the form of two major essays, one submitted before the mid-semester break and one submitted towards the end of semester. There is also a tutorial participation component which assesses students on their engagement with the primary texts and related critical materials, as well as their contributions to class via discussion and active listening.