Victorian Literature and Culture

Module code: EN7021

This module takes three different approaches to the study of Victorian literature and culture. The first is to look at the oeuvre of a particular author, considering the development of ideas and literary techniques across their career, and examining their writing in different genres. The second is to focus on a particular portion of the Victorian age, attempting to understand how literary texts produced in that historical ‘moment’ engaged both with contemporary events and with each other.

The third is to consider a particular theme in Victorian literature and culture (the Victorians and the past), tracking this concern in writing (and the visual arts) across the entire period, and examining how the theme is dealt with in radically different ways in a variety of genres. The final session continues our thinking about how the past is represented, and allows us to reflect on the ways in which the Victorians are presented to different audiences today, in museums, art galleries, literary and historical tours.