Survey Course II: British Literature - Romanticism to New English Literatures (Group A)

Course content

“We have been living, as it were, the life of three hundred years in thirty.” These were the impressions Thomas Arnold had of the early stages of industrialism. Both the 19th and 20th centuries were times of accelerating technological, economic, and social change, much of which was mirrored in constantly shifting artistic aesthetics.
This course is designed as a rough overview of British literary and cultural history from the late 18th century to the present day. We shall discuss the impact of the French Revolution on the writers of the early 19th century, compare the first and second generations of Romantic poets, and witness different stages of development in gothic fiction. Furthermore, we will analyse literary debates on crucial issues of the Victorian era, discuss textual reactions to both World Wars, and witness the change of discourses from Modernism to Post-modernism. Authors will range from William Blake to Lord Byron, from Matthew Arnold to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, from Oscar Wilde to Tom Stoppard, and from Virginia Woolf to Salman Rushdie. Such concepts as metafictionality and postcolonialism(s) will close our out-look into present day fiction. By reading and analysing a wide selection of works, students will also deepen their analytical skills of both literary and cultural texts. With a wide notion of ´text´ in mind, we shall compare literary works to filmic adaptations as well as intermedial encounters between texts and visual arts, like in the works of the Pre-Raphaelites.
The syllabus will be available on Stud.IP in advance of the semester.