EN4369 Victorian Literature and Science

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Module description

How is scientific knowledge transformed when it is deployed in literary writing? How do linguistic strategies such as metaphor shape the communication and reception of scientific theories and concepts? Can students of English analyse a passage of scientific writing in the same way as they would a literary text? This module sets out to answer these questions by exploring the diverse connections between literature and science in the Victorian period. The decades between 1830 and 1900 witnessed the development of the scientific disciplines in their modern forms, and the module will examine the role of literature in disseminating, questioning, and legitimising the intellectual authority of science in Victorian Britain. The module will trace the interactions between literature and science in Victorian poetry, the realist novel, and science fiction, and in the writing of scientists such as the physicist John Tyndall, the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, and Charles Darwin. (Group C)

Intended learning outcomes

• Demonstrate a comprehensive critical knowledge of the reciprocal relations between science and literary culture in the Victorian period;
• Evaluate different critical and theoretical approaches to the interactions between literature and science;
• Engage in the close critical analysis of literary texts and of the stylistic and rhetorical elements of scientific texts;
• Use a diverse range of printed and digital resources to inform independent research;
• Exercise skills in developing arguments based on textual evidence and on contextual and theoretical research (to be demonstrated through spoken contributions in seminars and assessed through written essays).