Section outline

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    Re-reading, reimagining and rewriting the (Victorian) canon

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    This course explores how contemporary fiction appropriates the canon and particularly nineteenth-century literature to reread and reconsider it in light of contemporary preoccupations with gender, race, class, sexuality, science, technologies, religion, imperialism and consumer culture. The course will focus particularly on neo-Victorian literature in its imaginary and critical re-engagement with the Victorian age, inviting students to approach, analyse and evaluate the theoretical assumptions, the social, and political contexts, the critical discourses and metaliterary and metafictional strategies of the neo-Victorian project as one of the most important contemporary productions in the English language. It will also consider not only the orginal source texts (form Othello to Jane Eyre, from Great Expectations to De Profundis and Sherlock Holmes’ stories), but also to other postcolonial and postmodern texts. 

    The novels included in the reading list – some of which may be chosen alternatively by the students, provide significant perspectives on the cultural phenomenon of the engagement with and the revision of the English canon that gave way to multiple rewritings over the last five decades, from the 1960s to the 21st century, including a host of modes and sub-genres ranging from historiographic metafictions, postcolonial rewritings, prequels, sequels alternative histories, biofiction, adaptations and their intersections. The course will refer to a number of cultural products ranging form novels to other forms of adaptive media, including films, and tv serials through a literary and cultural studies approach.

    Students are expected to attend class prepared to contribute to discussion, which includes completing the assigned reading, responding to questions, and engaging with peers to share ideas and a developing scholarly awareness of the course topics. You will also need to prepare at least one question in response to the readings. At the end of the course, students will discuss their papers though powerpoint presentations and will be asked to select their topics at least two weeks before the end of lessons.

    Reading  List: 
     Primary Sources: 

    Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, (1966, Penguin) (excerpts)

    John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969, Vintage)

    Peter Ackroyd, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983, Penguin)

    A. S. Byatt Possession (1990, Vintage)  

    Peter Carey, Jack Maggs (1998, Vintage)

    One novel will be chosen among the following: Caryl Phillips, The Nature of Blood (1987, Vintage) and/or The Lost Child (2015, Vintage); Julian Barnes's Arthur & George (2005, Vintage).

    Secondary sources (NB. All the critical material  will be provided in excerpts or full articles on Moodle and Ms Teams): 

    Davies, Helen. Gender and Ventriloquism in Victorian and Neo-Victorian Fiction: Passionate Puppets. London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. (selected reading)

    Hadley, Louisa, Neo-Victorian Fiction and Historical Narrative. The Victorians and Us. Basingstoke-New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. (selected reading)

    Heilmann, Ann - Llewellyn, Mark Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999–2009, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. (selected reading)

    Humphereys, Anne, “The Afterlife of the Victorian Novel: Novels about Novels”, in P. Brantlinger and W. Thesing (eds.), A Companion to the Victorian Novel, Oxford, Blackwell, 2004: 442-57. (selected reading)

    Kaplan, Cora, Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticisms. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. (selected reading)

    Keen, Suzanne, Romances of the Archive Romances of the Archive in Contempo- rary British Fiction, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001. (selected reading)

    Kirchknopf, Andrea, “(Re)Workings of Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Defi- nitions, Terminology, Contexts”, Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies, 1:1 (Autumn 2008): 53-80. 

    Parey, Armelle, “Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs: The True History of the Convict?”, Rewriting/Reprising: Plural Intertextualities, Edited by Georges Letissier, Cambridge Svholars Publishing, 2009, 126-137.

    Robinson, Alan, Narrating the Past: Historiography, Memory and the Contemporary Novel, London, Palgrave Macmillan (2011). (selected reading)



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    Topic 1

    • some key terms File PDF

      a list of key terms 

    • revisionary writing File PDF

      NB all these critical entries are optional material to enhance and support you in your approach to the critical premises of the course.

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    Topic 2

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    Topic 5

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    Topic 6

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    Topic 7

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    Topic 8

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    Topic 9

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    Topic 10