Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BBI-ANG22-227E.13
- Title
- Reading Literary Texts: Victorian Literature and Ethics
- Usual semester
- Both
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- en
- Learning outcomes
- The aim of this course is to present the development of ethical thinking during the Victorian Era. Through literary works by Victorian authors as well as philosophical and legal writings read, translated, or authored by Victorians, we will broaden both the literary and the cultural scope of the students.
- Course content
- We will read poetic and prose works by Victorian authors representing literature, philosophy, and science. Finding recurrent ethical themes, we will try to create a gestalt of the ethical thinking as reflected and represented in Victorian literature.
- Assessment method
- Weekly readings; presentation of a topic; in-class test; end-term essay feedback.
- Bibliography
- Fiction Dickens, Charles. TBD. Brontë. TBD Eliot, George. TBD Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure (1895) Poetry Browning, Robert. TBD. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. TBD. Tennyson, Alfred Lord. In Memoriam and minor verse. Rossetti, Christina. The Goblin Market and minor verse. Hopkins, Gerard Manley. TBD. Swinburne, Algernon. TBD. Arnold, Matthew. TBD. Wilde, Oscar. The Ballad of Reading Gaol and/or De Profundis. Ethics Huxley, Thomas. Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays [Collected Essays, Vol. IX]. London: Macmillan, 1894. Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics. 6th ed. London: Macmillan, 1901 [1874]. Spinoza, Benedict de. Ethics. Trans. George Eliot. Ed. Thomas Deegan. Salzburg: Salzburg University, 1981 [1856]. Symonds, John A. [Sr.]. “Remarks on Criminal Responsibility in Relation to Insanity.” The British Medical Journal 1.165 (Feb. 27, 1864): 223–226. Symonds, John A. [Jr.]. A Problem in Greek Ethics. London, 1901 [1873]. The Victorian Web: Literature, History, & Culture in the Age of Victoria. Feb 8, 2026 <https://www.victorianweb.org/index.html>. Secondary literature Black, Joseph Laurence et al. (ed.). "The Victorian Era." The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 5: The Victorian Era. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2006. xxix–lxxiii. Christ, Carol T. “T. S. Eliot and the Victorians.” Modern Philology 79.2 (Nov. 1981): 157–165. Madden, William A. “Victorian Morality: Ethics Not Mysterious.” The Review of Politics 23.4 (Oct. 1961): 458–471. Overholser, Renée V. “‘Looking with terrible temptation’: Gerard Manley Hopkins and Beautiful Bodies.” In: Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 19. Eds. John Maynard & Adrienne Auslander Munich. New York: AMS Press, 1991. Schneewind, Jerome B. Sidgwick’s Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971. The Victorian Web: Literature, History, & Culture in the Age of Victoria. Feb 8, 2026 <https://www.victorianweb.org/index.html>.