Admission requirements
It is strongly recommended that you have passed Literature 1A and Literature 2 (or equivalent) prior to taking this course.
Please note: BA English students have priority to take this course. If you would like to take this course as an elective, it is possible that you will not be able to take the course due to lack of space. If this is the case, you will be deregistered from the course.
Description
This course gives students the opportunity to explore many of the most fascinating and powerful of English literary texts. Though we will read two key poets, the focus is on prose fiction. The novel in nineteenth-century Britain was arguably the most vital and popular literary form of the period. The course takes in: Jane Austen’s most moving novel, Persuasion; Frankenstein, the sensational Gothic classic by Mary Shelley; two of the greatest of all "romantic" novels, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre; Dickens’s masterly novel of city life and guilty secrets, Great Expectations; George Eliot’s magnificent fable of social change, Silas Marner; Robert Louis Stevenson's classic of city Gothic, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde; and, moving towards "Modernism", we end with Joseph Conrad's fascinating and complex studies of Imperialism and displacement, his short stories, “Typhoon”, “Amy Foster”, and “The Secret Sharer”. We begin and end with verse - starting with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s powerful Romantic poems, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Kubla Khan” and “Dejection: An Ode”, and coming in our last class to Thomas Hardy's downbeat and passionate poetry, straddling the Victorian period and the early twentieth century. The texts we shall study occupy the fertile space between popular culture and high art. The course examines and investigates questions of individual identity, the social possibilities open to women, friendship, family, love and desire, the relation to Empire and colonialism, death, science, good and evil, the relations between the rich and the poor, the city, and the significance of life.
Course objectives
- This course will extend and deepen the power of students’ literary critical analysis through in-depth consideration of texts.
- Students will explore critical debates central to the literature of the long nineteenth century.
- The course will also aim to extend the students’ skills in the reading of narrative and the understanding of the relationship of a text to its cultural/social context.
- Students will be encouraged to share analytical and critical views on the texts ascribed in class discussion, including, where needed, short presentations, and will focus research skills in the writing of a final longer essay or pair of short essays.
- The essay/s will be on a relevant subject of their own choice within the parameters of the course, and will further extend the students’ critical skills and their ability to produce good, clear writing.
- A final exam will test students’ knowledge of the literature of the period, and give them an opportunity to display their insight, their familiarity with the texts, and the range of their critical ideas.
- The student will gain societal awareness through the study of literature that engages with profound social problems and questions.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Research (and writing)
Assessment method
Assessment
- Essay(s) (50%):
Two essays of 1200 words (25% each); or, one longer essay on a comparative subject (dealing with at least two texts featured on the syllabus) of 2500 words (50%).
The questions for the essays will be posted before the semester begins.
A minimum grade of a 6 for the essay(s) is required to pass the course.
- Exam (50%) (three-hour exam)
This exam will feature questions about the literature on the syllabus. The questions are designed to allow students to formulate informative answers based on critical insight into Romantic and Victorian literature and knowledge of the various important contexts gained during the tutorial discussion and individual study.
The questions for the essays and in the exam are designed to allow students to formulate informative answers based on critical insight into the novels and knowledge of the various important contexts gained during the tutorial discussion and individual study.
**Participation in the classes is an element in the assessment of the course – you must regularly attend the class and be prepared for each discussion. **
With the essay/s and the exam answers, students are graded according to the following criteria: the depth and sophistication (and to some extent, the originality) of their analysis; the extent to which their essays and exam answers argue a coherent case; the clarity and coherence of the structure; the sophistication, correctness and articulacy of the writing and the ability to produce formal academic prose; the intelligent use of a good range of relevant secondary material.
To receive a grade for your essay/s, you must upload them on Brightspace, so they go through Turnitin.
All students should be aware that plagiarism is considered a serious offence against scholarly integrity, and you are expected to present researched and thoughtful work that is your own. It is equally an offence to submit work that has been written using AI; this is, simply put, cheating, as it cannot be reasonably considered your work. Failure to present your own written work will have consequences.
Weighing
Essay(s): 50%: two essays of 1200 words (25% each); or, one longer essay of 2500 words (50%); minimum grade required: 6,0.
Final Exam: 50%
The final grade is determined by calculating the average grade of the exam answers plus the average grade for the essay/s combined with additional requirements. To pass the course, the weighted average must be 5.5 or higher. The additional requirement is a minimum grade of a 6 for the essays.
There is no final overall grade between a 5.0 and a 6.0: grades that average out at 5.5-5.99 are rounded up, while grades that average out at 5-5.49 are rounded down.
Resit
Only when the final grade is insufficient can students resit exams or rewrite essays. The resit grade will replace the original grade.
If you fail to receive at least a 6 for your essay/s or if you fail to submit an essay at all, you can revise the essay/s for the first day of the re-sit period.
If you receive a 5.49 or less for the exam and in consequence fail the course, you must re-sit the exam. However, **if you go on to pass the course overall because of your essay grade/s, you do not need to resit the exam after all. **
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Selected Poetry (1798-1802) (ed. H. J. Jackson) (Oxford World’s Classics).
Austen, Jane. Persuasion (1818) (Penguin Classics).
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein (1818; 1831) (Penguin Classics). (Make sure you have an edition that includes Shelley’s 1831 ‘Introduction’ to the novel.)
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights (1847) (Oxford World’s Classics or Penguin Classics).
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre (1847) (Penguin Classics).
Dickens, Charles. *Great Expectations *(1860-61) (Penguin Classics).
Eliot, George. Silas Marner (1861) (Penguin Classics or Oxford World’s Classics).
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde (Oxford World's Classics).
Conrad, Joseph. Typhoon and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classic)
The Hardy poems will be available in documents via Brightspace. The lecturer will also email these poems to the students one week before the class.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Registration Contract teaching and Exchange
Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Arsenaal
Remarks
For the first week, students must have read and thought about Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Kubla Khan” and “Dejection: An Ode”.