University of St Andrews

Key information

SCOTCAT credits : 30

ECTS credits : 15

Level : SCQF level 10

Semester: 2

Availability restrictions: Not automatically available to General Degree students

Planned timetable: 2.00 pm - 4.00 pm Fri

This module will use material culture studies as a lens through which to consider the continuities and ruptures between Victorian and modernist attitudes towards material culture and the ways in which attitudes towards the material informed the stylistic choices of fiction writers in these periods. Victorian novelists typically filled their works with detailed descriptions of physical environments and objects in order to create the 'solidity of specification' characteristic of realist fiction; modernist writers rejected this method as 'materialist' and sought alternatives to the solidity of the triple-decker novels of the Victorians. However, this module will question such easy distinctions and consider both differences and continuities between Victorian and modernist writers' fascination with and suspicion of things. Authors studied may include Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, E M Forster, and Virginia Woolf. (Group C)

Relationship to other modules

Pre-requisite(s): Before taking this module you must pass EN2003 and pass EN2004

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact: 1 x 2-hour seminar, and 2 optional consultative hours.

Scheduled learning hours: 22

Guided independent study hours: 278

Assessment pattern

As used by St Andrews: 2-hour Written Examination = 50%, Coursework = 50%

As defined by QAA
Written examinations : 50%
Practical examinations : 0%
Coursework: 50%

Re-assessment: 3-hour Written Examination = 100%

Personnel

Module coordinator: Dr C M Alt
Module teaching staff: Dr Christina Alt (CMA7)