Core Reading:
Primary Texts:

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)
Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke (1850)
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848)
Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as Man of Letters” (1840)

Geroge and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody (1892)

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
M. P. Shiel, The Yellow Danger: The Story of the World’s Greatest War (1898)

Hardy's ‘An Imaginative Woman’ (1893)

Kipling's Kim (1901) 


Secondary Texts:

Ailise Bulfin, ‘To Arms!’: Invasion Narratives and Late-Victorian Literature, in Literature Compass, (3 December 2015), 482-496.

Carol T. Christ, ‘“The Hero as Man of Letters”: Masculinity and Victorian Nonfiction Prose’ in Victorian Sages and Cultural Discourse: Renegotiating Gender and Power (1990)

Ian Haywood, ‘The Literature of Chartism’, The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literature, ed. Juliet John (Oxford: OUP, 2016), 84-102.

Linda Peterson, Traditions of Victorian Women's Autobiography: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing (1999), pp. 80-109.

Mary Poovey, ‘The Man-of-Letters Hero: David Copperfield and the Professional Writer’ in Uneven Developments the Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (1988), pp. 89-125.
Joanne Shattock, “The Construction of the Woman Writer” in Women and Literature in Britain, 1800-1900, (CUP, 2001), pp. 8-34.

Philip Davis's ‘David Copperfield’, in The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens (Oxford: OUP, 2018), pp. 208-219.

Week 1 Introduction Matthew Sweet, Inventing the Victorians (2001) The V21(Victorian Studies for the 21st Century) manifesto: (http://v21collective.org/manifesto-of-the-v21-collective-ten-theses/) Week 2: A Literary History James Adams, ‘Introduction: Locating Victorian Literature’, in A History of Victorian Literature (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 1-19, 22-25. Philip Davis, ‘Conditions of Literary Production’, in The Victorians: 1830-1880 (Oxford: OUP, 2002), pp. 197-201 In-class activity: speak about the key text, author and topic you are going to explore Week 3: Authorship Thomas Carlyle, ‘The Hero as Man of Letters’ (1840) Carol T. Christ, ‘“The Hero as Man of Letters”: Masculinity and Victorian Nonfiction Prose’ in Victorian Sages and Cultural Discourse: Renegotiating Gender and Power (1990) Week 4-5: Class, Chartism and Working-Class Autobiography Ian Haywood, ‘The Literature of Chartism’, The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literature, ed. Juliet John (Oxford: OUP, 2016), 84-102. Selected Readings of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke (1850) Week 6-7: Gender and Middle-Class Autobiography Charlotte Brontës’ Jane Eyre (1848) Linda H. Peterson, “‘The Feelings and Claims of Little People”: Heroic Missionary Memoirs, Domestic(cated) Spiritual Autobiography, and Jane Eyre: An Autobiography’, in Traditions of Victorian Women’s Autobiography, (London: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 80-108. Margaret Markwick, ‘Jane Eyre’, in A Companion to The Brontës (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 101-112. Week 8-9: Gender and Middle-Class Autobiography Dickens’s David Copperfield (1850), John Forster’s commentary on David Copperfield Mary Poovey’s Chapter Four ‘The Man-of-Letters Hero: David Copperfield and the Professional Writer’ in Uneven Developments the Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England (1988), 89-125. Philip Davis's ‘David Copperfield’, in The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens (Oxford: OUP, 2018), 208-219. Week 10 (Reading Week) Submit your research proposal Week 11 A Nobody’s Autobiography The Dairy of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith A. James Hammerton’s ‘Pooterism or Partnership? Marriage and Masculine Identity in the Lower Middle Class, 1870-1920’, Journal of British Studies, 38.3 (1999): 291-321. Week 12-13: Imperial/British Fiction: The Battle of Dorking (1870) Ailise Bulfin, ‘To Arms!’: Invasion Narratives and Late-Victorian Literature, in Literature Compass (3 December 2015), 482-496. Discuss one of the following texts: H. G. Wells’s The War of the World (1897) or M. P. Shiel, The Yellow Danger: The Story of the World’s Greatest War (1898) Give Feedback on your research proposal (Week 12) Week 14 New Women in Hardy’s Fin de Siècle Fiction Thomas Hardy’s ‘An Imaginative Woman’ (1893) Michal Peled Ginsburg, ‘Imagination, Poetic Creation, and Gender: Hardy’s “Imaginative Woman”’, Modern Philology, 110.2 (2012):273-88. Week 15-16 Orientalism and Buddhism in Kipling’s Kim Edward Said’s Introduction to Kipling’s Kim Selected readings of Kipling’s Kim Deanna K. Kreisel, ‘The Psychology of Victorian Buddhism and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim’, Nineteenth-Century Literature, 73.2 (2018): 227–59. Week 17 Conference Presentation Week 18 Deadline for Research Paper

Evaluation

Grades 10% Oral Presentations (Two Oral Presentations) 5 % Conference Presentation 15% attendance and participation (based on your speaking frequency) 70% Research Paper (a paper of 3000-3500 words to be submitted by week 18) Your paper will be graded by the following criteria A. Articulate a clear argument/position B. Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the topic C. Demonstrate subject knowledge in a logical structure D. Contain relevant and sufficient support for claim(s) or point(s) made. E. Offer adequate analysis of the primary texts. F. Appropriate use of citations for quotes and materials consulted G. Clarity of Writing (Grammar, Sentence Structure, Punctuation and Style) You should type and submit your assignments electronically on time. There is a 10 point penalty for each day late. Any homework that is copied from another source will receive a ‘0’.