Academic Year/course:
2019/20
416 - Degree in English
27830 - English Literature III
Información del Plan Docente
Academic Year:
2019/20
Subject:
27830 - English Literature III
Faculty / School:
103 - Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Degree:
416 - Degree in English
ECTS:
6.0
Year:
3
Semester:
First semester
Subject Type:
Compulsory
Module:
---
3. Assessment (1st and 2nd call)
4. Methodology, learning tasks, syllabus and resources
4.1. Methodological overview
See "Learning tasks" and "Syllabus".
More information will be provided on the first day of class.
4.2. Learning tasks
This is a 6 ECTS course organized as follows:
- Lectures.
- Practice sessions.
- Autonomous work and study.
- Assessment tasks.
4.3. Syllabus
The course will address the following topics:
- Topic 1. The Novel at the Turn of the Century: Jane Austen. From the sentimental to the drawing-room novel. The coexistence of the Neoclassical legacy and the emergent Romantic ideology. Common traits in Jane Austen's fictional heroines, their capacity to "learn" and types of related characters. The narrative structure and the transitional character of these novels, with special reference to Sense and Sensibility.
- Topic 2. Romantic Poetry (I). First Generation: Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge. Antecedents to Romanticism and the term 'Romantic'. The importance of English Empiricism and German Idealism. Doctrinal ideas as expressed in Lyrical Ballads and in Biograhia Literaria. Romantic Poetry (II): The Younger Generation: Keats, Shelley and Byron. Similarities and differences with their forefathers. Readings: selection of poems and excerpts from the most representative works of these poets.
- Topic 3. Romantic Fiction: the Brontës. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights: structure and point of view; imagery and symbolism; style and religious intensity; class and gender issues.
- Topic 4. The Early Victorian Novel. General features of the period and realist fiction. Charles Dickens's canon: structural, thematic and stylistic characteristics of his novels. Utilitarianism vs. Romanticism and the social background as reflected in Hard Times.
- Topic 5. a) The Late Victorian Novel. The novel as microcosm: multiplot structure, dialogical form, and ethical, socio-political and spiritual dilemmas as reflected in George Eliot's novels. b) The Novel at the Turn of the Century. The fin de siècle crisis and the advent of modernity. Thomas Hardy, the "atypical" Victorian: provincial background, his relation to Romanticism and the influence of Charles Darwin and of John Stuart Mill. "The Withered Arm": form and meaning.
- Topic 6. Victorian Poetry and Drama: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Tennyson, Swinburne (selection of poems); Oscar Wilde's polemical rejection of mid-Victorian values in life and art in the name of aestheticism as reflected in The Importance of Being Earnest.
COMPULSORY TEXTS (used in lectures, practice sessions and tutorials)
- Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
- Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
- Charles Dickens, Hard Times
- Thomas Hardy, "The Withered Arm"
- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
FILMS (film copies are available at the SEMETA):
- Ang Lee, Sense and Sensibilty
- Franco Zeffirelli, Jane Eyre
- William Wyler, Wuthering Heights
- The Importance of Being Earnest (recorded performance)
- Brian Gilbert, Wilde