Ovidius University Constana

Faculty of Letters

Course instructor: Prof. Dr. Adina Ciugureanu

Seminar: Dr. Nicoleta Stanca
British Literature
2nd year English Major/ Minor 2014-2015
course: 1 h / week; seminar: 1h / week

Course description:
The course focuses on both the Romantics and the Victorians in the nineteenth century. Poets like William Blake, William
Wordsworth, T.S. Coleridge, John Keats, P.B. Shelley and G.G. Byron will be discussed as representatives of early and late
Romanticism. Novelists such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, George Eliot, and Thomas
Hardy will be analysed as Victorians both at the lectures and at the seminars. The writers and texts chosen are meant to
illustrate the major values, concerns, dilemmas, and writing strategies of nineteenth century fiction. Victorian poetry will
form the second important topic but out of the nineteenth century poets, poems by Alfred Tennyson, Robert and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning will be analyzed in the next semester course. The fictional and poetic texts and their authors will be
presented against the background of radical changes and progress which the nineteenth century generally represented for
culture and society.
Objectives:
During the course students are encouraged to respond critically to and write coherently on the texts suggested for
discussion.
Assessment:
course and seminar attendance (10%) and participation (10%);
written essay on a suggested topic (30%) - students are invited to write a 1,000 word essay on one of the topics
suggested during the seminar representing the close reading of a particular chapter or poem. The essay will be turned in
before the last seminar;
final written examination (50%).
Semester I
week 1:
week 2:

The Early Romantics and the Lake Poets: William Blake, William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge,
John Keats (lecture)
A selection of poems by the Lake Poets (seminar)

week 3:

The Revolutionary Romantics: G. G. Byron, P.B. Shelley (lecture)

week 4:

a selection of poems by Byron and Shelley (seminar)

week 5:

Introduction to the Victorian Age (lecture)

week 6:

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice (seminar)

week7:

Charles Dickens and the Victorian world (lecture)

week 8:

Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (seminar)

week 9:

The Bront Sisters and the Romantic side of Victorianism (lecture)

week 10:

Emily Bront: Wuthering Heights (seminar)

week 11:

George Eliot and the Victorian provincial town (lecture)

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week 12:

George Eliot: Middlemarch (seminar)

week 13:

Thomas Hardy and the Victorian country-side (lecture)

week 14:

Thomas Hardy: Tess of the dUrbervilles (seminar)

Bibliography
Primary and secondary sources available with DL Department Library; AM American Corner; BU Biblioteca
Universitara; BJ Biblioteca Judeteana and PH Photocopied.
Primary sources:
Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice, London: Planet Three (DL)
Mansfield Park (DL)
Bront, Emily. Wuthering Heights. London: Wordsworth, 1992. (BU)
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. London: Penguin, 1994. (DL)
Great Expectations. London, New York: Macmillan, 1994. (BU)
David Copperfield. London: Penguin, 1994. (DL)
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. London: Penguin, 1994. (BU)
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Penguin, 1994. (DL)
The Oxford Anthology of English Literature. Vol. II (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Shelley). Frank
Kermode and John Hollander. OUP, 1973. (DL)
Poems to study:
William Blake: Songs of Innocence (Introduction, The Lamb, The Little Black Boy); Songs of Experience (The
Fly, The Tiger, The Chimney Sweeper)
William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads (from Preface, Tintern Abbey, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, My Heart
Leaps Up, The Solitary Reaper)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: from Biographia Literaria, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Kubla Khan
George Gordon, Lord Byron: Childe Harolds Pilgrimage (from Canto III)
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias, Song to the Men of England, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark
John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn, La Belle Dame sans Merci
Secondary sources:
Acker, Kathy. Great Expectations A Novel. New York: Grove Press, 1982. (AM)
Carter, Roland. The Routlegde History of Literature in English. London, New York: Routledge, 1998. (BU)
Ciugureanu, Adina. Victorian Selves (A Study in the Literature of the Victorian Age). "The Victorians, the Periodical Press
and the Construction of Identity ", pp. 11-41, "The World, the Self and the Realist Novel", pp. 43-65, "Lady
Novelists and the Female Self", pp. 87-116, "The Tragic Self", pp. 165-181, Constanta: Ovidius University Press,
2004. (DL)
Ciugureanu, Adina. A Course in Victorian Literature. Bucuresti: Credis, 2001. (DL)
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Douglas Brooks-Davies. Charles Dickens - Great Expectations. Penguin Critical Studies, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1989. (PH)
Ford, Boris (ed.) The Pelican Guide to English Literature. From Dickens to Hardy, vol. 6. "Charles Dickens", pp. 119-143,
"The Bronte Sisters and Wuthering Heights", pp. 256-273, "The Poetry of Tennyson", pp. 227-243, "George Eliot
in Middlemarch", pp. 274-293, London: Penguin, 1982. (DL)
Harvey, Geoffrey. "Tess of the dUrbervilles", pp. 82-88 in The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy, London and
New York: Routledge, 2003. (PH)
Hobsbaum, Philip. A Readers Guide to Charles Dickens. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1973. (AM)
Kettle, Arnold. An Introduction to the English Novel: Henry James to the Present (Hardy: Tess of dUrbervilles, pp. 4962), vol. 2, New York: Harper & Row, 1960. (DL)
MacKenzie, Norman & Jeanne. Dickens A Life. New York: OUP, 1979. (AM)
Mengham. Rod. Emily Bront - Wuthering Heights. Penguin Critical Studies, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983. (PH)
Neale, Catherine. George Eliot - Middlemarch. Penguin Critical Studies, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1989. (PH)
Peck, John (ed). New Casebooks: George Eliot - Middlemarch. London: Macmillan, 1992. (DL)
Preda, Ioan Aurel. English Romantic Poetics. Institutul European, Iasi, 2005.
Sanders, Andrew, The Oxford History of English Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994 (DL).
Schlicke. Paul (ed.). Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford, New York: OUP, 1999, pp. 252-257, 542-545. (PH)
Sejourne, Philip. The Feminine Tradition in English Fiction. Institutul European, Iasi. 1999.
Sutherland, John. "Is Heathcliff a Murderer?", pp. 53-65, Is Alec a Rapist?, pp. 202-212, Who Will Angel Marry Next,
pp. 434-437, Is Will Ladislaw legitimate?, pp. 146-155 in Puzzles in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996. (PH)
Thornley, G.C and Gwyneth Roberts. An Outline of English Literature (Later Nineteenth-century poetry, pp. 101-113,
Nineteenth-century novelists, pp. 115-134). New edition 1984, London: Longman, 1998. (DL)
Van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel: Form and Function (on Great Expectations, pp. 155-170, on Wuthering Heights,
pp. 186-208, on Tess of the D'Urbervilles, pp. 237-255), New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1953. (DL).
Vlad, Eduard. Romantic Myths, Alternative Stories. Ex Ponto, 2004. (DL)
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/welcome.htm
http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/austen/austenov.html
Essay Topics

Students are invited to write a 1,000 word essay on one of the topics suggested below, representing the close reading
of (a) particular chapter(s) or poem(s). The essay will be turned in before the last seminar.
1. Comment on William Blakes interpretation of innocence or experience in Songs of Innocence and/or Songs of
Experience. Apply the analysis to three poems of your own choice.
2. Discuss the poetical views of Wordsworth and Coleridge in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads revealing the ways in
which the two manage to use/apply them in at least two poems of the volume.
3. Discuss the theme of nature/tourism with the Romantics through one poem of your choice. You may refer to
Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats.
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4. Discuss the exotic/Oriental theme with the Romantics (provide two examples). You may refer to Coleridge, Byron,
Shelley.
5. Discuss the use of myth with the Romantics (provide at least two examples). You may refer to Shelley, Byron,
Keats.
6. What is the Byronic hero and how is he portrayed in Childe Harolds Pilgrimage?
7. Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in
tranquillity. Comment on William Wordsworths definition of poetry and identify the strategies used by the poet
in I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud, The Solitary Reaper and/or Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey.
8. In her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Mary Wollstonecraft complains about the pernicious effects
which arise from the unnatural distinctions established in the society, that is distinctions which divide the nation
into classes and ranks. How does Jane Austen tackle this theme in Pride and Prejudice?
9. Pride and Prejudice opens with the famous assertion: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Discuss the significance of marriage, and the woman
status in the novel or in any another novel by Austen of your choice.
10. According to Herbert Pockets father, A true gentleman in manner must be a true gentleman at heart. How
does Chapter 57 in Dickenss Great Expectations develop this idea?
11. Pips first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things is the realization that he was an orphan.
Make Pips portrait as the boy is introduced Chapter 1 of Great Expectations. What is the role played by
imagination in the development of the heros expectations?
12. There, fenced to into the corner with Joes leg, and sitting on my own little stool looking at the fire, was I
again!. Comment on the relationship between old Pip and young Pip as Dickens describes it in Chapters 1 and 59.
13. Advised by the novelist Edward Bulwer Lytton who found the ending of Great Expectations too pessimistic,
Dickens changed it, but made it rather ambiguous. Which of the endings is preferable and why? What arguments
can you bring in favour of either?
14. How does David Copperfield feel about his attempt to become a gentleman? Does he feel the same as Pip?
Compare the use of the theme of the gentlemen in the two novels by Dickens.
15. Wuthering Heights is structured on the binary opposition civilization vs. wilderness. How does Emily Bront
manage to make the reader aware of it? Contrast the descriptions of the two estates, Wuthering Heights and
Thrushcross Grange, in Chapters 1 and 6. Are they representative of their respective owners, Heathcliff and the
Lintons?
16. Make Catherines portrait as she is presented in Chapters 3 and 9. Discuss the characters duality, referring to her
genuine love for Heathcliff vs. her crave for social refinement.
17. Discuss the Gothic with Emily Bronte and John Keats (Lamia, La Belle Dame sans Merci).
18. Analyze the romantic component of marriage with Charlotte Bront, George Eliot and/or Jane Austen.
19. In her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Mary Wollstonecraft claims that education and reason are the
key to any question of gender. How does George Eliot develop this idea in Middlemarch?
20. Discuss the theme of marriage in George Eliots Middlemarch. What makes Dorothea disillusioned and unhappy?
(Refer to one chapter).
21. Illustrate George Eliots departure from the classic realism by subverting objectivism/ subjectivism in terms of
authorial consciousness and showing the multiplicity of points of view in Chapters 27 and 29 of Middlemarch.
22. Comment on the importance which Hardy attaches to the road in Tess. Refer to its meaning to the opening and
closing chapters (Chapters 1 and 59).
23. Comment on the way in which Tess enters the text (Chapter 2) and the way in which she leaves it (Chapter 58).
24. Compare Tesss description (Chapter 2) with the description of her sister, Liza-Lu, at the end of the novel (Chapter
59). Does the latters portrait (half girl, half woman a spiritualized image of Tess) make her more suitable for
Angel?
25. Compare and contrast the field-work atmosphere which Hardy describes in Chapter 14 with the one in Chapter 47.
Comment on his views on traditional vs. modern farming.
26. Compare Hardys description of Talbothays with that of Flintcomb Ash in Chapters 27 and 47. Why is the former
seen as a sort of Eden and the second as a kind of Inferno?