Fin-De-Siecle

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 6
• Convenor: Dr Victoria Mills
• Assessment: a 1500-word commentary (30%) and 3500-word essay (70% each)

The fin de siècle (c.1880-1900) was a vibrant period of British literature, a moment of transition between the Victorian and Modern eras that resulted in an extraordinary cultural efflorescence. Be prepared for all manner of strange things: Gothic monsters and dastardly foreigners on the streets of London; acts of derring-do in the African wilderness; terrifying women in trousers, possibly smoking opium cigarettes; and that towering figure of late Victorian perversity, Oscar Wilde. It was also a period in which many writers and artists drew attention to ongoing social problems.

In this module we consider contextual materials from biology, psychology, anthropology, sexology, imperial history, genre theory and literary debate in order to understand texts in their appropriate cultural context. We will be reading:

• Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst, The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History
• Amy Levy, The Romance of a Shop (1888) (a New Woman novel)
• William Morris, News from Nowhere (1890)
• H. Rider Haggard, Alan Quatermain (1887)
• Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
• H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
• Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
• A selection of short stories from the literature of 'Outcast London'

Indicative syllabus

• Introduction
• Aestheticism
• Decadence
• Degeneration and regeneration
• Imperialism
• The New Woman
• Decadence
• Gothic
• Outcast London
• Deciphering London

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• discuss in a critically informed manner a diverse body of literary and cultural texts from the fin de siècle in the context of wider Victorian debates about art, science, progress, sexuality etc
• relate aesthetic and generic issues with social/political/ethical ones and vice versa
• critically assess the ways in which the concept of the fin de siècle has been constructed both in late-nineteenth-century discourses (such as degeneration theory) and in current critical debates
• identify key elements of fin-de-siècle culture and place this into the context of the period’s relationship with the Victorian age in general and the cultural climate of the early years of the twentieth century.