Module overview
In 1831 the philosopher John Stuart Mill struggled to define the ‘Spirit’ of the nineteenth century. ‘It is’, he wrote, ‘an age of transition. Mankind have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones.’ If the nineteenth century was, as is sometimes assumed, an age of complacency and confidence, it was also an age of anxiety and openness, experimentation and invention. This module examines the literature of this age of transition. Students enrolled in this module will learn about the material history of reading and publication, and investigate nineteenth-century experiments with genre and literary mode. Throughout, we will emphasise the ways in which the fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction prose written in Britain between 1800 and 1900 sought to invent new forms of writing and styles of expression capable of coping with new doctrines, institutions, and ways of living.