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Sex and the City: From Victorian Metropolis to Modernist Wasteland

  • Module code: EL5010
  • Year: 2018/9
  • Level: 5
  • Credits: 30
  • Pre-requisites: Successful completion of level 4 ELL or equivalent
  • Co-requisites: None

Summary

This module is an optional period module at Level 5. We will study key texts from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries that register the ways in which Britain is transformed by the Industrial Revolution, and which give expression to fears about technology, social mobility and urban culture. We will consider literature of the period that questions and resists established theories of gendered identity, and which challenges the literary representation of sexuality, defying censorship in the process. We will be introduced to writers who engage with contemporary debates about science, religion, the empire, and racial and national identity. And we will encounter a range of consciously modern texts which dislocate and make new the reader's experience by technical innovation and experiment. In recent years, writers studied have included Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.

Aims

  • To explore Victorian, fin de siècle, and Modernist literature in its historical, cultural and literary contexts paying particular attention to the rise of urban culture and the ways in which this impacted upon ideas about gender and sexuality.
  • To introduce key critical and theoretical developments in Victorian and Modernist Studies
  • To discuss the advantages and limitations of the classification of literature by period
  • To develop expertise in reading analytically combined with careful attention to historical and cultural background

Learning outcomes

  • Demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the conventions and characteristics of Victorian and Modernist literature
  • Show an awareness of the ways in which Victorian and Modernist literature engages with key issues in the period
  • Read and analyse literary texts with depth and critical insight
  • Write critically informed and thoughtfully analytical essays

Curriculum content

Students will study a range of Victorian and Modernist poetry selected from an anthology such as The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 2. They will also encounter a diverse set of novels from the long nineteenth century, for example Oliver Twist (1838) to Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), in order to chart the development of literary representations of the fallen woman and to open up discussion about sexual morality and literary censorship. Fictional texts will also be studied in relation to non-fiction texts, for example Charlotte Bronte's Villette (1853) and Mary Seacole's mid-century autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, in order to develop our understanding of topics such as female subjectivity and cultural perceptions of the woman writer. Having acquired a solid grounding in the conventions of nineteenth-century literature, students will then proceed to examine the works of a number of Modernist writers, including key novels of the early twentieth century and inter-war period which make a deliberate break from such conventions and through various forms of experimentation attempt to represent individual consciousness with greater authenticity. Texts might include Conrad's Lord Jim, Lawrence's, Sons and Lovers, Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.

Teaching and learning strategy

The class will meet for a one-hour interactive lecture which will situate the literature of the Victorian to Modernist periods within appropriate historical, cultural and theoretical contexts. In some weeks the lecture will be replaced with a workshop which will enable students to work in small groups on questions raised in the previous week's lecture. The class will then divide into seminar groups which will be centred around class discussion and will involve close readings of the texts. The seminar will be based on the principles of collaborative learning, where classes will be structured to promote active learning and individual engagement with the texts.

Breakdown of Teaching and Learning Hours

Definitive UNISTATS Category Indicative Description Hours
Scheduled learning and teaching 22x3 hour interactive lecturers 66
Guided independent study 234
Total (number of credits x 10) 300

Assessment strategy

The summative assessment for this module comprises of a portfolio (100%). For the purposes of illustration, the portfolio might be composed of the following elements:

1)    2 x Close Reading (2 x 1000 words) - 50%

2)    Essay (2500 words) - 50%

Formative assessments involve a variety of oral presentations in-class, active participation in workshops and seminars, weekly inquiry sheets, and meetings with the module leader and module tutors during independent study. Feedback will provided through peer review and by the module tutors. All assignments for formative assessment will be forward-led and focused on promoting students' progress in developing critical and communication skills throughout the year. The critical skills gained in this module will be tested in a variety of summative assessments within the portfolio and are designed to complement the work done by students in the two core Level 5 modules as well as feeding forward into the Level 6 Capstone module.

Mapping of Learning Outcomes to Assessment Strategy (Indicative)

Learning Outcome Assessment Strategy
Demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the conventions and characteristics of Victorian and Modernist literature Portfolio
Show an awareness of the ways in which Victorian and Modernist literature engages with key issues in the period Portfolio
Read and analyse literary texts with depth and critical insight Portfolio
Write critically informed and thoughtfully analytical essays Portfolio

Elements of Assessment

Description of Assessment Definitive UNISTATS Categories Percentage
Coursework Close Reading 25%
Coursework Close Reading 25%
Coursework Essay 50%
Total (to equal 100%) 100%

Achieving a pass

It IS NOT a requirement that any major assessment category is passed separately in order to achieve an overall pass for the module.

Bibliography core texts

Francis O'Gorman, Victorian Poetry: An Annotated Anthology

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Charlotte Bronte, Villette

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

Bibliography recommended reading

Armstrong, Isobel, Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics (London: Routledge, 1993)

Attridge, Derek, ed., The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Beer, Gillian, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narratives in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-century Fiction (London: Routledge, 1983)

Boyd, Kelly and Rohan McWilliam, eds., The Victorian Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2007)

Cunningham, Valentine, ed., Victorians: Poetry and Poetics - A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008)

David, Deidre, ed., Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Flint, Kate, The Woman Reader 1837-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)

Gilmour, Robin, The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1830-1890 (London: Longman,1993)

Howarth, Peter, Cambridge Introduction to Modernist Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)

Hughes, Linda K., ed., The Cambridge Introduction to Victorian Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Leighton, Angela, ed., Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell,1996)

Levine, George, Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction

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