School of English
Module manager: Professor Richard Salmon
Email: r.salmon@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable
Year running 2024/25
| ENGL2096 | The World Before Us: Literature 1660–1830 |
ENGL3289 - Victorian Literature
This module is approved as a discovery module
This module introduces students to a wide range of writing from the period. Its focus on literature written in Britain but also recognises Britain’s troubled presence in other lands, as well as the writing produced there. Students will encounter works from across the nineteenth century, including many of the best-known works of Victorian literature, but will also encounter less familiar texts, written by all kinds of people, from many places around the world.
This module aims to introduce students to a broad range of nineteenth-century writers, genres, discourses and preoccupations. It explores the major social, political and literary developments in Britain during the period and how those developments were experienced by other writers elsewhere.
By situating British writers in a broader context, the module will encourage students to recognise nineteenth-century Britain’s connections to and relationships with the wider world. They will be encouraged to reflect on what it meant to be a writer and a reader in this period.
Reading literary texts alongside contextual material (including scientific, political, and religious writings, journalism and satire), students will be enabled to evaluate the place and function of the specifically literary discourses during this period and to learn how literature was viewed as one form of writing among many.
On successful completion of the module, you should be able to:
1. demonstrate knowledge of a range of literature from the period and analyse texts in different genres, styles, and registers
2. show a broader awareness of the context in which texts were produced in the period
3. use non-literary material to support arguments about nineteenth-century literature
4. construct arguments drawing on the appropriate critical literature
The module will develop:
• Skills for effective communication, oral and written.
• Capacity to analyse and critically examine diverse forms of discourse.
• Ability to acquire quantities of complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way.
• Capacity for independent thought and judgement.
• Critical reasoning.
• Research skills, including information retrieval skills, the organisation of material, and the evaluation of its importance.
• IT skills (word processing).
• Time management and organisational skills.
• Independent learning.
This module explores some landmark works of the Victorian period in a range of genres, alongside less familiar texts. As well as literature from British writers in Britain, the course also introduces students to writing by those from a range of backgrounds elsewhere in the world.
For example, in 1857, Mary Seacole published a memoir in which she wrote about the difficulties she had, as a Jamaican-born black woman, obtaining a position as a nurse during the Crimean War. Although ‘other voices spoke for me’, she found that her experiences and references counted for little. In the end, Seacole took matters into her own hands and travelled there herself.
The module uses Seacole’s experiences to frame a broader examination of literature from the nineteenth century. Students will read what people wrote about themselves and their different experiences of living through the century. It will also allow them to reflect on the continuing legacy of the period and how it continues to be felt today.
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lectures | 10 | 1 | 10 |
| Seminar | 10 | 2 | 20 |
| Private study hours | 170 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 30 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 200 | ||
Formative feedback will be provided in class during seminars. The first assessed piece of work (25%) will provide an opportunity for formative feedback in advance of the second (due at the end of the semester 75%).
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Assignment | 1000 word written assessment | 25 |
| Essay | 2500 words | 75 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated
The reading list is available from the Library website
Last updated: 8/2/2024
Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team