Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BMI-ANGD17-CI6aE.07
- Title
- Romantic and Victorian Literature - Foundations and Perspectives: Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Theory
- Usual semester
- Spring
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- Learning outcomes
- The aim of the course is to introduce students to nineteenth-century theories, cultural and literary history of sexuality. Students will learn the theoretical and historical terminology essential to the subject, as well as the specific issues, methodological challenges and significance of theory and cultural history. They will be able to distinguish between literary approaches, between canonical and non-canonical texts, and between canonical and context-specific ‘suspicious’ or even ‘subversive’ readings. By the end of the course, students will be able to independently produce a literary analysis expertly embedded in theory and historiography.
- Course content
- The course begins with an overview and revision of modern theories of sexuality. Then, special emphasis will be given to censorship laws and cultural criticism in the nineteenth century. Further seminar sessions will be framed by the ‘literariness’ of sexuality and structured by the methodology known as ‘reading anthologically.’ The analysis of the in-class discussions will be guided both by an independent analysis of the specific text and by a reading that makes up an ‘anthology’ with the other required readings. The texts are drawn mainly from Anglo-American literature, with some excursions into other European literatures. Most of the course will be devoted to Edward Prime-Stevenson’s novella, Imre: A Memorandum.
- Assessment method
- Students are expected to read the required texts before the seminar sessions. Active participation in class discussions is also expected. The term mark consists of two components. One is a short multiple-choice test on the compulsory readings and the class material. The other is an ‘essay presentation’: instead of a home-essay, students deliver their results as a formal presentation of 10-12 minutes.
- Bibliography
- Compulsary: [Byron, George?]. Don Leon. Byron, George. Manfred: A Dramatic Poem Eliot, George. The Lifted Veil. Joux, Otto de. Die Enterbten des Liebesglücks. (excerpts in English) Prime-Stevenson, Edward. Imre: A Memorandum —. ‘Out of the Sun.’ Her Enemy, Some Friends—and Other Personages —. ‘The Lady with the Madonna-Face.’ Stifter, Adalbert. Brigitta. (in English translation) Tennyson, Alfred. ‘In Memoriam A.H.H.’ Ungern-Sternberg, Alexander von. Jena und Leipzig. (excerpts in English) Whitman, Walt. ‘I Sing the Body Electric.’ [Wilde, Oscar, et al.]. Teleny; or, The Reverse of the Medal: A Physiological Romance of To-Day. Vols. 1–2. Recommended: Bristow, Joseph. Sexuality. Routledge, 2006. Hurley, Nat. ‘The Queer Traffic in Literature; or, Reading Anthologically.’ ESC 36.1 (2010): 81–108. Leck, Ralph M. Vita Sexualis. University of Illinois Press, 2016. Looby, Christopher. ‘The Literariness of Sexuality: Or, How to Do the (Literary) History of (American) Sexuality.’ American Literary History 25.4 (2013): 841–854. Pretsell, Douglas. Urning. Toronto University Press, 2024. Tobin, Robert. Peripheral Desires. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.