Course Catalogue

Humanities and Social Science

1. To establish violence as a significant and persistent literary, political and cultural preoccupation in nineteenth-century literature (1800-1900), and examine key works in which the issues of class, empire and gender were explored by authors of this period in relation to conflict and crisis; 2. To enable students to explore how the subject of violence influenced literary aesthetics during the Romantic and Victorian periods in relation to cultural and political concerns of the nineteenth century; 3. To give students the opportunity to develop a research interest in a related area.

Outline Syllabus:The module will be taught in three sections, after an introduction establishing the literary, cultural and political dimensions of the question of violence, and establishing contexts, such as understanding the origins of imperial and class violence at the beginning of the nineteenth century, along with insurgent responses to these; 1. Exploring literary responses to such crises and understanding these in relation to trends and innovations in literature from the 1800 to 1900, concentrating on selected Romantic and Victorian texts; 2. Establishing the relationship between literary aesthetics and violence: engaging with the relationship between literary responses to political violence originating in coercive activity by both state and capitalist formations 3. Understanding violence as a key topic of nineteenth-century literary expression in British, Irish and American literature. Learning Activities

Module Overview:
This module will establish violence as a significant and persistent literary, political and cultural preoccupation in nineteenth-century literature (1800-1900), and examine key works in which the issues of class, empire and gender were explored by authors of this period in relation to conflict and crisis.

Additional Information:This module concentrates on nineteenth-century literature's exploration of the relationship between violence and modernity. Concentrating on selected texts published from the 1800s-1900, it will address the ways in which violence was treated as an integral aspect of literary writing across the genres of fiction, poetry, drama, political writing and journalism. Students will study the ways in which literary texts addressed class tension imperial conflict, patriarchal oppression and corporate violence, along with the ideological conflicts that these crises provoked. In addition, they will encounter philosophical and theoretical perspectives addressing these topics.