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Course structure and module descriptions
| Module title | Description |
|---|---|
| Semester One | |
| EN7001 Research Methods for Postgraduates in English (Core) | This module is compulsory for all new postgraduates in the School of English and in the Victorian Studies Centre. It meets on Wednesday mornings from 10.00am to 12.00noon in the first semester. |
|
HS7501 Victorian Society (Core) |
We will study the Victorians by getting as close as we can to their own view of themselves. Our thinking, therefore, will engage with nineteenth-century ideas and feelings. In that sense Victorian Society will resemble a literature module. But we will also endeavour to see those ideas and feelings in their time and place. In that sense Victorian Society will resemble a history module. Throughout, the meaning of ‘Victorian’ will stretch beyond Queen Victoria’s reign. We will be concerned with what historians call ‘the long nineteenth century’ – 1790 to 1914. |
| Plus one option module | |
| Semester Two | |
| EN7021 Approaches to Victorian Literature and Culture | The 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 an author’s ideas and literary techniques across their career, and examining their writing in different genres. The second is to consider a particular theme in Victorian literature and culture, 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 third 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. |
| Plus one option module | |
|
Dissertation |
Students will submit a 20,000-word dissertation by 15 September of the year in which they submit their proposal. |
Option modules
In addition to the core modules, you will take two optional modules chosen from the following (please note that the list of options offered will vary from year to year):
- Evolution and Entropy: Representations of the Sciences in Victorian Literature
- Charles Dickens
- The English Country House in Literature
- Vices and Virtues: Behaving and Misbehaving in British Society (Historical Studies)
- Women in Literature, Culture and Society, 1850-1900
- Narrative: Theories, Texts and Practices
- Literature and Culture in 1859
- Understanding English and Welsh Communities and Cultures, 1800-2000 (Historical Studies)
- The Brontes
- Anglo-Jewish Literature and Culture
Assessment
For the bibliography module, students submit a working bibliography of between 25-50 items and give an oral presentation of no more than five minutes in
the last seminar of the module.
Each core module is assessed by an essay of 5,000 words, each option module by an essay of 4,000 words.
In addition, students must submit a dissertation of not more than 20,000 words by 15 September of the year in which the taught course is completed.
The timetable
The course may be taken in one year (12 months) full-time or two years (24 months) part-time. Part-time students take the core modules in their first year and the optional modules in their second year. The core modules are taught on Wednesdays in the first and second semesters. The options are taught on other days of the week.
