English Literature and Culture: the Victorian Era

2025/2026

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

4

ECTS credits

Delivered at:

Department of Philology

Course type:

Elective course

When:

3 year, 1, 2 module

Instructor

Goroshkova, Renata

Course Syllabus

Abstract

The Victorian period is the powerful milestone on the route to social, cultural, religious, ideological change in Britain, which led to the destruction of long-held dogmas and formed a worldview that is still influencing modern thought and behaviour. The English Literature and Culture: the Victorian Era course delves into the cultural aspects of the Victorian age, a period that played a crucial role in shaping the essence of Englishness, and examines how the nineteenth-century British writers and poets dealt with the great shift in consciousness and addressed a broad range of political, social and aesthetic matters of that turbulent era.

Learning Objectives

• Analyse the main features of literature of the examined period Show the relationship between the socio-historical context of the era and the development of literary trends Discuss the impact of the Romantic Revolution on the making of modern mind Explore how Victorian literature shaped national identity and depicted the image of typical representatives of the British nation.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Student ascertains the historical environments that formed English literature of the 19th century.
• Student evaluates a number of Victorian literary pieces in the context of their cultural milieu.
• Student Identifies the stylistic devices and main ideas of Romantic and Victorian literary works

Course Contents

• Victorian Literature Part I
• Victorian Literature Part II

Assessment Elements

• Test
  In one or several lectures or seminars, students are given a test of 10 questions based on a literary works analyzed at lectures by the course instructor. The test is conducted at no advance notice. The exact number of tests and the questions they contain are kept secret. There can be no more than 10 tests conducted during the course. The test(s) cannot be retaken; if a student has missed a test, the result is marked 0 (zero). The mark for this course requirement is the mean of the marks for all the tests offered throughout the course duration.
• Exam (Oral Format)
  The Oral exam is conducted in English. Each student receives a list of three questions, where the first and the second questions correspond to the the theoretical material of the two modules. The third question is an excerpt from literary pieces studied at the seminars, and a task for it (e.g. “identify the main topic of a text”). A student may be required to answer additional questions on any theme studied throughout the course so that examiners could gain full insight into understanding of the material.
• In-Class Participation
• Presentation
  In the first week of the course, students sign up for presentations, which are based on their independent study of a literary work or a theoretical problem in the historical and cultural contexts.

Interim Assessment

• 2025/2026 2nd module
  0.2 * Exam (Oral Format) + 0.2 * In-Class Participation + 0.2 * In-Class Participation + 0.2 * Presentation + 0.2 * Test

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• 9781316075418 - Hall, Catherine - Legacies of British Slave-Ownership : Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain - 2014 - Cambridge University Press - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=805473 - nlebk - 805473
• A brief history of life in Victorian Britain : a social history of Queen Victoria's reign, Paterson, M., 2011
• A Short History of English Literature, Evans, B.I., 1976
• Charles Dickens : a critical study, Gissing, G., 2007
• Charles Dickens : a very short introduction, Hartley, J., 2019
• Dickens's style, , 2013
• Dickens's women : his great expectations, Isba, A., 2011
• Haefele-Thomas, A. (2012). Queer Others in Victorian Gothic : Transgressing Monstrosity. University of Wales Press.
• John Witte, J. (2001). A Dickensian Era of Religious Rights: An Update on Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective. https://doi.org/10.17613/y06g-n262
• Lee, M. A., Rochette-Crawley, S., Kurtzleben, J., Fallon, E., & Feddersen, R. C. (2013). A Reader’s Companion to the Short Story in English. New York: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=658441
• Oscar Wilde and the theatre of the 1890s, Powell, K., 2009
• Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Vol.1: ., Hunt, W. H., 2013
• Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Vol.2: ., Hunt, W. H., 2013
• Scott, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, , 2011
• The art of the Pre-Raphaelites, Prettejohn, E., 2007
• The Cambridge companion to the Pre-Raphaelites, , 2012
• The Cambridge history of early modern English literature, , 2004
• Шевченко, Л. Л. History of English Literature (from Romanticism to Modern Period) : учебное пособие / Л. Л. Шевченко. — Барнаул : АлтГПУ, 2016. — 236 с. — ISBN 978–5–88210–828–0. — Текст : электронный // Лань : электронно-библиотечная система. — URL: https://e.lanbook.com/book/112313 (дата обращения: 00.00.0000). — Режим доступа: для авториз. пользователей.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Studying English literature, , 2010

Authors

• GOROSHKOVA RENATA RISHATOVNA
• AFANASEVA ANASTASIYA VIKTOROVNA