Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture ( Poetry, Fiction, Literary and Social Criticism, Victorian Literature and Film Adaptation)-MA Seminar 4 3301-LBS4PYP
Classes will be conducted as workshops based on the assigned reading. Students will be conducting research projects which will be shared in the classroom. Some of the classes will be devoted to student-supervisor meetings to discuss the progress of the MA thesis and students' feedback.
The seminar is to facilitate students' MA research on a chosen subject concerning the literature and culture of Victorian Britain. Alongside the practical information connected to writing the MA thesis, students will read and discuss texts which are indispensable for better understanding of the cultural and social issues of the Victorian era. Suggested topics to be discussed during the course:
- Victorian novel and its readers,
- Victorian novel in film, om television and on stage,
- the business of Victorian publishing,
- the aesthetics of the Victorian novel,
- gender, domesticity and the Victorian novel,
- race, otherness, imperialism, colonialism and the Victorian novel,
- sensation and the fantastic and the Victorian Literature
- intellectual debates in the Victorian novel: religion and science,
- experimental form in Victorian poetry,
- the dramatic monologue,
- psychology, psychiatry, mesmerism, dreams, insanity and Victorian literature,
- Victorian mirror of history,
- the condition of England novel,
- adopting and adapting Victorian literature: stage, film, radio, television
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Having completed the course participants should have acquired:
- understanding of principal concepts of literary and cultural theory
- ability to conduct interdisciplinary research deploying heterogenous approaches and methodologies
- ability to develop and discuss their own ways of reading and interpreting a wide variety of cultural documents (developing such skills as presentation, communication, critical thinking)
- the mechanics of writing an MA dissertation in English: citing sources in the text, parenthetical documentation and the list of works cited, the format of the research paper
Assessment criteria
• Active participation
• Continuous assessment of assignments
To pass the 1rst semester of the MA seminar, a student needs to submit a research proposal of his/her MA thesis. To pass the 2nd semester, a student needs to write one chapter of his/her MA thesis. To pass the 3rd semester, a student needs to complete two chapters of his/her MA thesis. To pass the 4th semester, a student needs to submit a complete MA thesis.
Allowable absences: 2
Bibliography
"MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers." 8th Edition. The Modern Language Association of America, New York: 2016.
Burnham Bloom, Abigail and Mary Sanders Pollock. "Victorian Literature and Fil Adaptation." Cambria Press, 2011.
Leitch, Thomas (ed.). "The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies." OUP, 2017.
Glavin, John. "Dickens on Screen." CUP, 2003.
Guy, Josephine M. (ed.). "The Victorian Age. An Anthology of Sources and Documents." London: Routledge, 2002.
David, D. (ed.). "The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel." Cambridge: CUP, 2001.
Bristow, J. (ed.). "The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry." Cambridge: CUP, 2000.
Denisoff, D. (ed.). "The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories." Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2004.
Black, J. (ed.). "The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Victorian Era." Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006.
Pike, Royston E. (ed.). "Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age." London: George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1974.
Robinson, Solveig (ed.). "A Serious Occupation. Literary Criticism by Victorian Women Writers." Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2003.
Eigner, Edwin M., and George J. Worth (eds). Victorian Criticism of the Novel. Cambridge: CUP, 1985.