This module offers students the opportunity to consider the development, implications and significance of a variety of forms of sensation fiction published during the nineteenth century.

• offer a close textual analysis of sensation fiction published during the long nineteenth century, paying particular attention to issues of style and narrative mechanisms;
• discuss the origins, key themes and cultural significance of both forms, and consider how they interrelate;
• engage in written form with the issues raised by the texts studied, while demonstrating an awareness of both established and new criticism.

Timetabled sessions includelectures and discussion sessions where students may have the opportunity to make presentations and/or lead discussion. Lectures and seminars are usually supplemented with handoutsoutlining content and linked to PowerPoint slides that provide more detailed summaries. Class handouts and slides will be made available on Learning Central in advance of the classes, as will supplementary matter (e.g. further notes, additional guidance, extra reading material).

There will be a weekly lecture across the semester supported by seminars. The lectures aim to provide key knowledge and critical perspectives on key aspects of Sensation fiction; the seminars provide the opportunity for close analysis and small group discussion.

The particular skills of the module bear upon reading and understanding how a literary genre (in this case, fiction) adapts to, negotiates with and transforms the culture from which it emerges. This requires careful scholarship, sensitivity to language through close reading and a broader historical awareness of social change. Employability skills include the ability to synthesise information; a critical awareness of how texts generate meaning in a given period; and operating in group-based discussion involving negotiating ideas and producing clear, informed arguments.

This course is assessed by the submission of one essay of UP TO 3200 words.

The main readings for this module are texts, book-length studies and journal articles (available online and/or in the library).Short fictions will be provided in the form of either a course reader or electronically through Learning Central, while novel-length works have been selected from readily available editions. Students should contact the module leader as early as possible if they will require readings in an alternative format.

·         Early Sensations: The ‘Tale of Terror’ in the 1820s and 1830s

·         Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

·         Ellen Wood, East Lynne (1861)

·         Wilkie Collins, No Name (1862)

·         Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies (1871)

·         Later sensations: Short fiction at the fin-de-siècle

Preliminary Reading (A fuller reading list will be supplied in the first lecture.)

Patrick Brantlinger and William B. Thesing (eds), A Companion to the Victorian Novel (Oxford and Malden, MA, 2002).

Winifred Hughes, The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s (Princeton and Guildford, 1980).

Lyn Pykett, The Sensation Novel: From ‘The Woman in White’ to ‘The Moonstone’ (Plymouth, 1994).

Lyn Pykett, ‘Sensation and the Fantastic in the Victorian Novel’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, ed. Deirdre David (Cambridge, 2001).

The Oxford World’s Classics editions are recommended for the novels studied on the module. Students are advised to read East Lynne and No Name well before the commencement of the module, as they are long texts (600+ pages).

A fuller reading list will be supplied in the first lecture