We investigate thematic, formal and wider historical and cultural aspects of Victorian poetry as symptoms of the period's painful awareness of modernity. Texts studied will be chosen from a selection of writers including Arnold, Barrett-Browning, Clare, Hardy, Hopkins, Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti, Tennyson, Thomson and Wilde.

A COURSEWORK ESSAY [LO 1-4]
A GROUP PRESENTATION [LO 5]

Teaching will be through lectures, workshops and seminars. You will work independently (on research, preparation of lectures, seminars and seminar presentations) and in pairs or small groups (on seminar assignments and presentations).

Armstrong Isobel Victorian Poetry - Poetry, Poetics and Politics, London (Routledge) 1993.
Benjamin Walter The Origin of German Tragic Drama, London (Verso) 1985 (excerpts).
Foucault Michel What is Enlightenment? In 'The Foucault Reader', London (Penguin) 1991.
Giddens Anthony Modernity and Self Identity - Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge, (Polity Press) 1991.
Karlin Daniel The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse London (Penguin) 1997.
Lash Scott et al. ed. Modernity and Identity, Oxford (Blackwell) 1992.

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