Syllabus
Content: This is the second semester of the English Literature core course. While the series of lectures will provide a general social and cultural context for understanding the concept of "Romanticism" and "Victorianism", the seminars will focus on close critical discussion of canonical, mainly shorter lyrical works (Romanticism) and selected representative novels (Jane Austen and Victorian). Both the poems and novels are chosen to exemplify both their centrality to the period as well as a diversity of themes and genres. Reading the texts within a context of the historical, political and literary background of the period will enable students to discern the qualities which cause these writers (poets or novelists respectively) to be linked together and also those which serve to individualise them. At the same time the texts represent the spirit of the age.
Texts:
Poetry - W. Wordsworth - "The World Is Too Much with Us" -"I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" - "Intimations of Immortality"(extracts)- S. T. Coleridge - "Kubla Khan"- John Keats -"Ode to a Nightingale" (extracts) (the Victorian poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold will also be discussed)
Novels - Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice- E. Brontë - Wuthering Heights - Ch. Dickens - Bleak House (extracts)- Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure
- Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Annotation
The objective of the course is to introduce students to a representative sample of texts of the British Romantic movement and to the Victorian novel and poetry.
Course work and assessment: - weekly reading assignments - continuous assessment
- 1 essay 1000 words)