English Literature and Culture III Seminar

Spring Term 2018, Tuesday 8-9.30 a.m. (Room A536)

Instructor: dr. Gabriella Hartvig, e-mail address: hartvig.gabriella@pte.hu (tel. (72)
503 600 /ext. 24672).
Office hours: 10-11.30 on Tuesdays, 11-12.30 on Wednesdays or by appointment in Room
A/525.

Description: The purpose of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to discuss
and understand in greater depth the most representative readings of the English Literature and
Culture II lecture series. Over the semester, we will focus on an array of literature and cultural
history from the Victorian era to the 1990s, including poetry, fiction, and drama to gain
insight into major themes and trends of this part of the history of English literature and
culture.

Requirements: to complete this course students must read all the assigned material and
always bring the primary texts to class. Five short quizzes will be administered to make sure
readings are done thoroughly and on time, and two short essays of about 1,200 words each
should be submitted to the dates below. The essays are expected to discuss topics
recommended by the instructor. They should follow the latest MLA format, complete with
Works Cited documentation of at least four secondary sources. Students are recommended to
discuss the outline of their paper before completing it. Internet sources can be found at
www.lib.pte.hu (JSTOR, Project Muse, EBSCO, ProQuest Central). Note that some of those
databases can only be reached via the university. Essays are due: 6 March and 24 April.

Grading policy: grades will be based on general class-work, the essays, and the quizzes.
Attendance is checked, two unexcused absences are allowed. All courses held at this
institute will be graded on the basis of students’ English language skills as well as the
specifics of the particular course.

Selected Reference Literature: A History of English Literature by Michael Alexander

(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000): Parts 4 (“Victorian Literature to 1880”) and 5 (“The
Twentieth Century”). The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. 2. Eighth Edition (New
York, London: Norton, 2006). Online (uploaded to MeetStreet).

Weeks 1-2 (6, 13 Feb) Introduction. Victorian Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement
Readings: from Norton Anthology Vol. 2 (online): Charles Darwin: from The Descent of Man
(pp. 1545-49); “The Children’s Employment Commission” (pp. 1562-64); Walter Besant:
“The Queen’s Reign” (pp. 1605-06).
Poems: “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred Tennyson; “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning;
Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Spring.”
Reference: Chapter 8 (“The Age and its Sages”: pp. 247-60) and Chapter 9 (“Poetry”: pp. 261-
71) from A History of English Literature.

Weeks 3-4 (20-27 Feb) Victorian Novelists

Readings: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights or Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre;
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens; The Lifted Veil by George Eliot or Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Reference: Chapter 10 (“Fiction”) from A History of English Literature (pp. 272-92).

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Week 5 (6 March) Victorian Theatre and the Beginnings of Modern Drama: Oscar
Wilde and G. B. Shaw
Readings: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde or Mrs. Warren’s Profession or
Pygmalion by G. B. Shaw
Reference: Chapter 11 (“A Revival of Drama”) from A History of English Literature (pp. 297-
301).

Week 6 (13 March) Empire and National Identity

Readings: from Norton Anthology Vol. 2 (online): John A. Hobson: “Imperialism” (pp. 1632-
34); R. Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (pp. 1821-22), “Proclamation of an Irish
Republic” (1618), “Innisfree,” “Easter 1916” by W. B. Yeats; Joseph Conrad, Heart of
Darkness or E. M. Forster, A Passage to India.
Reference: Chapter 12 (“Ends and Beginnings”) from A History of English Literature (pp. 311-
18).

Week 7 (20 March) The Rise and Development of Modern Fiction

Readings: “Modern Fiction” (essay) by Virginia Woolf; Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf;
“The Dead” from Dubliners by James Joyce.
Reference: Chapter 13 (“Modernism”: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf) from A History of English
Literature (pp. 327-31, 339-343).

Week 8 (27 March) The Modernist Art of T. S. Eliot and Poetry between the Wars.
Readings: T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; “Musée de Beaux Arts” by
W. H. Auden;
Reference: Chapter 13 (“Modernism”: T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden) from A History of English
Literature (pp. 332-37, 346-49).

Week 9 (3 April) Spring Break, no class.

Weeks 10-11 (10, 17 April) Post-War Theatre and Fiction

Readings: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot or Endgame; William Golding’s Lord of the
Flies or 1984 by George Orwell.
Reference: Chapters 13 and 14 (“George Orwell” and “William Golding”) from A History of
English Literature (pp. 352, 366-68).

Week 12 (24 April) Contemporary British Literature

Readings: John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman or Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea .
Reference: Chapter 14 (“Postscript on the Current”) from A History of English Literature (pp.
376-81).

Week 13 (1 May) No Class

Week 14 (8 May): Summary and Conclusion

Discussion of Seminar Essays.

Reference Literature:

Alexander, Michael. A History of English Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.

Attridge, Derek. The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.

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Bényei, Tamás. Ártatlan ország. Az angol regény 1945 után. Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi
Kiadó, 2003.
Brantlinger, Patrick and Thesing, William B., eds. A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2002.
Greenblatt, Stephen, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2. 7th ed.
London: Norton, 2000.
Innes, Christopher D. Modern British Drama. 2nd ed. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge UP,
2000 (1992).
Levenson, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. 2nd ed. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2011 (1998).
MacKay, Marina. The Cambridge Introduction to the Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2011.
Marwick, Arthur. British Society Since 1945. London: Penguin, 2003.
Moran, Maureen. Victorian Literature and Culture. London, New York: Continuum, 2006.
Mullan, John. How Novels Work. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.
Powell, Kerry, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.
Richetti, John. The Columbia History of the British Novel. New York, Chichester: Columnia
UP, 1994.
Shepard, Simon and Mick Wallis. Drama / Theatre / Performance. London and New York:
Routledge, 2004.
Shepard, Simon and Peter Womack. English Drama: A Cultural History. Oxford: Blackwell,
1996.
Thompson, Peter. The Cambridge Introduction to English Theatre, 1660-1990. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2006.