COURSE DESCRIPTION
The objective of the course is to provide a survey of English literature in the Romantic (1798-1832) and the Victorian (1832-1901) periods. Focusing on the most significant concepts, themes and genres, as well as the key texts both in verse and prose by the major writers of the Romantic period (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley) and the Victorian period (Tennyson, the Brownings, the Rossettis, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontës, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll) the course aims at an understanding of the cultural terms ’Romanticism’ and ’Victorianism’ in English literature.
Schedule of classes
1. Introduction to Romanticism
2. The Gothic novel: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
3. Romantic image-text: The art and life of William Blake, poet, prophet, painter, printmaker
4. Lake Poets and Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth & Coleridge’s creative collaboration
5. The second generation of Romantic poetry: Revolution and Imagination in Byron’s, Shelley’s, and Keats’ work
6. Introduction to the cultural and historical context of the Victorian period
7. Victorian Poetry: Tennyson, Browning, Elizabeth B. Browning, D.G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
8. The novel in transition (novel of manners, novel of sensibility, sentimental novel, social satire, historical novel) Jane Austen, Walter Scott, William Thackeray, George Eliot
9. The Victorian Novel: the serialized Bildungsroman fusing sentimentality and realism: Charles Dickens
10. The Victorian Novel: Gothic Romanticism: The Brontë Sisters
11. The Victorian Novel: Regionalism, Naturalism, Existentialism: Thomas Hardy Aestheticism, Symbolism: Oscar Wilde
12. Victorian Fantastic Fiction: Sensation Novel, Adventure Novel, Gothic novel: Bram Stoker, RL Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, Children’s Literature for all ages: George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, Charles Kingsley
E-COURSEBOOK CHAPTERS & PPTS (click on the titles below to download them –Units 1-6 should be downloaded from SZTE ETA website where the hyperlinks will take you)
Unit 1. Introduction to Romanticism
Unit 3. William Blake’s Poetry
Unit 6. Introduction to the cultural and historical context of the Victorian period
Unit 7. Victorian poetry from Tennyson to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Unit 8. The novel in transition: Jane Austen, Walter Scott, William Thackeray, George Eliot
Unit 10. Gothic romanticism in the novels of the Brontë Sisters
Unit 11. Regional realism and moral philosophy in Thomas Hardy’s work
Unit 13. Victorian children’s literature for all ages
LIST OF KEY TERMS
COMPULSORY READING LIST
Novels:
Jane Austen. Pride And Prejudice
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Thomas Hardy. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Lewis Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Poems
William Blake: The Lamb, The Tyger, The Sick Rose, The Chimney Sweeper
William Wordsworth: Tintern Abbey, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, We are Seven, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (extracts)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Kubla Khan, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Biographia Literaria (extracts)
Percy Bysshe Shelley: To a Skylark, Mont Blanc, Ode to the West Wind
John Keats: La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn
Lord George Gordon Byron: Darkness, Beppo
Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Blessed Damozel
Christina Rossetti: Goblin Market
Robert Browning: My Last Duchess, Two in the Campagna
Lord Alfred Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott, Ulysses
Algernon Charles Swinburne: Faustine
Matthew Arnold: Dover Beach
Grading
A thorough familiarity with the primary texts (preferably in English) is the most important requirement. A written exam will take place in the examination period. You must show up on at least one exam in order to be able to sit for a rewrite (UV). You’ll need 51% for a pass. In the exam you will be invited to define key concepts, recognise and analyse excerpts from primary texts, and produce brief argumentative essays.
Note: To complete the course you cannot miss more than 6 lecture sessions. If you are absent from more than 50% of the sessions (6 occasions) you qualify on Neptun as „Nem értékelhető.” At the beginning of each lecture you will sign an attendance sheet. On a few random occasions I will check if the list of names is identical with the persons attending the lecture. The forgery of a signature is an offense punishable by failure in the class and may have further, legal administrative consequences.
A few recommended readings. All available at the local University Library (TIK)
Altrick, Daniel. Victorian People and Ideas. W.W. Norton, 1974.
Armstrong, Isobel. Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics. London, NY: Routledge, 1993
Craton, Lillian. The Victorian freak show. Amherst: Cambria Press, 2009.
Brookner, Anita. Romanticism and its discontents. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
Day, Aidan. Romanticism. New York: Routledge, 1996.
De Man, Paul. The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York Columbia University Press, 1984.
Ford, Boris, ed. From Dickens to Hardy. New Pelican Guide to Eng Lit. Vol.6. NY:Penguin, 1982.
Frye, Northrop. A study of English romanticism. Brighton : Sussex Harvester P VI, 1983.
Gilmour, Robin. The Victorian Period. The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature. 1830-1890. London: Longman, 1993. The idea of the gentleman in the Victorian novel, 1981.
Harrison, John Fletcher. Early Victorian Britain : 1832-51 London : Fontana P., 1988.
—. Late Victorian Britain : 1875-1901. London : Routledge, 2000
Houghton, Walter Edwards. The Victorian frame of mind: 1830-1870. New Haven: Yale UP, 1959.
Johnson, Patricia. Hidden hands : working-class women and Victorian social-problem fiction. Ohio, 2001
Lerner, Laurence. The Victorians. London: Methuen, 1978.
Miller, J. Hillis. The form of Victorian fiction. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968.
Péter Ágnes. Keats világa. Európa Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1989.
Prickett, Stephen. Victorian fantasy. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2005.
Reynolds, Kimberley. Victorian heroines: Representations of Femininity in Nineteenth-century Literature and Art. London, NY: Harvester Wheatseaf, 1993
Szegedy-Maszák Mihály. Kubla Kán és Pickwick úr. Romantika és realizmus az angol irodalomban. 1986.
Tótfalusi István. Byron világa. Európa Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1975.
Tótfalusi István. Shelley világa. Európa Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1971.
Tucker, Herbert F, ed. A companion to Victorian literature and culture. Oxford : Blackwell, 1999.
Vicinus, Martha, ed. Suffer and be Still : Women in the Victorian Age.Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1973.
Wu, Duncan, ed. Romanticism. A Critical Reader. 1998. + Romanticism. An Anthology. 1994.
Youngquist, Paul. Monstrosities Bodies and British Romanticism. Minneapolis: UP Minnesota, 2003.
