MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Undergraduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

ENH2030

Rewriting Victorian narratives: origins and oblivion

H Scutter

Synopsis This subject explores, through a variety of mainstream and marginalised texts, some of the major intellectual and social issues of the nineteenth century, including Darwinian narratives of origins and oblivion, notions of history and historicity, the progress myth, industrialisation and urbanisation, changing political paradigms, social unrest and dissent, class mobility, the rights of women, redefinitions of childhood, the rise of science and the decline of religious faith. We will ask, as texts are situated within specific historic and cultural contexts, what lies beyond the pale, excluded from text and context. The subject engages with such theoretical approaches as discourse analysis, new historicism, feminism and cultural studies.

Assessment Seminar paper (1500 words): 25% + Short essay 91500 words): 25% + Long essay (3000 words): 50%

Prescribed texts

• Auerbach N and U C Knoepflmacher Forbidden journeys U of Chicago P
• Bronte E Wuthering Heights Penguin
• Carroll L Alice's adventures in Wonderland Puffin
• Collins W The woman in white Penguin
• Dickens C Bleak House Oxford
• Eliot G Daniel Deronda Penguin
• Hardy T Tess of the d'Urbervilles Oxford
• Richardson H H The fortunes of Richard Mahony Angus and Robertson
• Stowe H B Uncle Tom's cabin Signet
• Departmental handbook of further readings

Recommended reading

• Armstrong N Desire and domestic fiction Oxford
• Azim F The colonial rise of the novel Routledge
• Dusinberre J Alice to the lighthouse Macmillan
• Michie E Outside the pale: Cultural exclusion, gender difference and the Victorian woman writer Cornell U P
• Shires L Rewriting the Victorians Routledge