Victorian Short Stories

Modules: see module overview – PS Lit
(4110T) 2 SWS, Do 12-14,
WS 2023/2024
Universität Bayreuth

In this seminar we will concentrate on selected short stories featuring the Victorian Age. We will start with determining the characteristics that define the short story format including structural and compositional patterns, before studying selected works by Victorian writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy.
The topics addressed in the short stories are just as complex as the writing styles of the authors. Hence, social concerns and developments will be discussed in reference to their literary representations. Accompanied by secondary sources shedding light on specific aspects addressed in the selected works, this seminar aims to create awareness of the diversity that is inherent to these stories and that thereby represent the Victorian Age.

Text to be obtained by students:
Denisoff, Dennis, ed. The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Short Stories