Memory and Time in the Nineteenth Century

Module description

From Wordsworth’s ‘gleams of half-extinguished thought’ to Freud’s excavation of the human psyche, writers and thinkers throughout the nineteenth century were preoccupied by the workings of memory and time. This module will investigate connections between literature, the arts, philosophy and science, revealing the centrality of memory and memorialization to the nineteenth-century imagination. We will examine how developments in science and technology impacted upon the perception and representation of time, while also exploring how modernity was constructed through an active engagement with the past. Topics to be discussed will include: time and modernity; technology and the standardization of time; history and historicism; afterlives and hauntings; evolution and extinction; architecture and material memory; nostalgia and trauma; imperial and colonial time.

 

Assessment details

Coursework

1 x 4,000 word essay (100%)

Educational aims & objectives

Students will:

• Gain a broad understanding of how literature responded to and impacted upon shifting notions of memory and time in the period.
• Explore philosophical, psychological and scientific theories of memory and time alongside key works of Romantic and Victorian Literature.
• Display a nuanced understanding of the ways in which broader trends in intellectual and cultural history influenced the production and consumption of literature
• Develop the critical skills to independently interpret ‘literary’ texts in a comparative manner, alongside non-literary texts, visual artworks and material artefacts
• Interrogate and critique the notion of ‘modernity’
• Trace the material, political and aesthetic legacies of nineteenth-century Britain in contemporary culture.

Learning outcomes

Students will:

• Gain a broad understanding of how literature responded to and impacted upon shifting notions of memory and time in the period.
• Explore philosophical, psychological and scientific theories of memory and time alongside key works of Romantic and Victorian Literature.
• Display a nuanced understanding of the ways in which broader trends in intellectual and cultural history influenced the production and consumption of literature
• Develop the critical skills to independently interpret ‘literary’ texts in a comparative manner, alongside non-literary texts, visual artworks and material artefacts
• Interrogate and critique the notion of ‘modernity’
• Trace the material, political and aesthetic legacies of nineteenth-century Britain in contemporary culture.

Teaching pattern

One hour lecture and one hour seminar, weekly

Suggested reading list

• Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1820)
• Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850)
• Elizabeth Gaskell, Cousin Phillis (1864)
• Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)
• Poetry and prose extracts from William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, John Ruskin, George Eliot, Edward Blyden, J.E. Casely-Hayford, Robert Louis Stevenson, Toru Dutt, and Zadie Smith.

Module description disclaimer

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Please note that the module descriptions above are related to the current academic year and are subject to change.