Admission requirements
Literature 1A and Literature 2, or equivalent.
Description
This course gives students the opportunity to explore seven of the most fascinating and powerful of English novels. Prose fiction in nineteenth-century Britain was arguably the most vital and popular literary form of the period. The course takes in: a rightly famous romantically-tinged social comedy by Jane Austen; Frankenstein and Dracula, two sensational Gothic classics by Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker; the greatest of all ‘romantic novels, Wuthering Heights; Dickens’s masterly novel of city life and guilty secrets, Great Expectations; George Eliot’s magnificent novel of English society, Middlemarch; and Thomas Hardy’s brilliant tragedy of rural life, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The fictions 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, death, science, good and evil, the relations between the rich and the poor, the city, and the value of life.
Course objectives
Course objective 1: This course will extend and deepen the power of students’ literary critical analysis through in-depth consideration of texts.
Course objective 2: Students will explore critical debates central to the literature of the nineteenth century.
Course objective 3: 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.
Course objective 4: 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 essay.
Course objective 5: This essay 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.
Course objective 6: 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.
Timetable
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Mode of instruction
Seminar
Research (Independent study by the student)
Assessment method
Assessment
Essay(s): two essays of 1200 words; or, one longer essay on a comparative subject (dealing with at least two texts featured on the syllabus) of 2500 words. The essay/s is/are due in at the start of the exam period. Students who wish to do so may hand in the first short essay as a mid-term on the Monday following the study week.
Final 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.
Weighing
Essay(s) (50%): two essays of 1200 words (25% each); or, one longer essay of 2500 words (50%).
Final Exam (50%)
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 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.
Attendance is compulsory. Missing more than two tutorials means that students will be excluded from the tutorials. Unauthorized absence also applies to being unprepared, not participating and/or not bringing the relevant course materials to class.
Resit
Insufficient components can be retaken.
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
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice (1813) (Penguin Classics).
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein (1818; 1831) (Penguin Classics).
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights (1847) (Oxford World Classics).
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations (1860-61) (Penguin Classics).
Eliot, George. Middlemarch (1870-71) (Penguin Classics or Oxford World Classics).
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) (Penguin Classics).
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897) (Oxford World Classics)
Registration
Enrolment through uSis is mandatory.
General information about uSis is available on the website
Registration Studeren à la carte and Contractonderwijs Registration
Registration Studeren à la carte
Registration Contractonderwijs
Contact
Please contact Student administration Arsenaal or the coordinator of studies for questions.
Remarks
You must read for the first seminar, the whole of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Disclaimer: Please note that the course descriptions, in particular the assessment method, might be adjusted (timely) depending on the measures taken regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.