Course syllabus

ENGLISH 219 NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

SEMESTER 2, 2018

15 points

 
Course Convenor: Joanne Wilkes

Tutor:

Course delivery format:

2 hours of lectures and 1 hour of tutorial per week

(Timetable and room details can be viewed on Student Services Online)

Description

The course considers a range of mostly British literature from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, up to the 1890s – poetry, fiction and drama – as regards its treatment of growing up in the period. It explores the era in which the modern idea of childhood as a distinctive state emerged, as is evident in the poetry of William Blake and William Wordsworth. (It was Wordsworth who wrote that "The child is father of the man".)

The course focuses on the literary themes of attaining maturity and an adult sense of self – an important theme of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817), the first novel we study. The gains and losses experienced in leaving childhood behind, central to Blake and Wordsworth’s poetry, are a major focus of some of the prose texts, including Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Henry James’s Washington Square. Moreover, the development of sexual and gender identity – a prominent modern preoccupation - was also a compelling concern of nineteenth-century writers. As well as featuring in the texts already mentioned, it is significant too in the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest

In all of the texts, the opportunities and constraints afforded by the social context are important influences on the individual’s growth. Although the texts are very varied in genre and technique, all register the impact of the social context of the period, a context that is undergoing alteration itself. So we consider, for example, the renewed interest in the natural world in the face of industrial change and urbanisation, plus the different conventions governing female as distinct from male behaviour in the period. Wilde’s comedy, which parodies many Victorian assumptions and practices, is a fitting end to the course.

Reading/Texts

There will be a course anthology containing the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth and Emily Dickinson.

Jane Austen, Persuasion (Oxford World’s Classics)

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (Oxford World’s Classics)

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (Oxford World’s Classics)

Henry James, Washington Square (Oxford World’s Classics)

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (Oxford)

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Macmillan)

 

Assessment

Coursework + exam

Prerequisites

30 points at Stage I in English

Restrictions  ENGLISH 104

 Assessment Summary:

 Workload and deadlines for submission of coursework:           

The University of Auckland's expectation is that students spend 10 hours per week on a 15-point course, including time in class and personal study. Students should manage their academic workload and other commitments accordingly. Deadlines for coursework are set by course convenors and will be advertised in course material. You should submit your work on time. In extreme circumstances, such as illness, you may seek an extension but you may be required to provide supporting information before the assignment is due. Late assignments without a pre-approved extension may be penalised by loss of marks – check course information for details.

Course summary:

Date Details Due