Macquarie University

Victorian Literary Culture - ENGL314

This unit asks the question – what does “Victorian” mean as a literary and cultural category? Faced with rapid urbanisation, industrialisation, and imperial expansion expansion, nineteenth-century writers responded with energy and passion, participating in the construction of an increasingly diverse literary marketplace. This was the period when the novel, poetry, the popular essay and, journalism, as well as a variety of new visual media such as photography and proto-cinematic forms, were radically redefining the cultural and public sphere. This was also the age of emerging mass readerships and literary celebrities, such as Dickens and Tennyson. Taking a selection of texts as a starting point, this unit explores Victorian literary culture as dynamic, diverse, and self-consciously modern , not only in the more visible form of cinematic adaptations, but in ideological and institutional forms and contexts as well.

Timetable Information

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