Literary Time-Travel: Victorian & Neo-Victorian Literature

3.0 credits · Graduate

In the Victorian period (1837-1901), many genres of English-language fiction—the domestic novel, the bildungsroman, science fiction, detective fiction—attained their familiar and still flourishing forms. Neo-Victorian authors time-travel back to inhabit Victorian characters, settings, and themes. Neo-Victorian practices including reimagining a classic Victorian novel from the point of view of a marginalized character; populating Victorian settings with new protagonists with identities (working-class, queer, subaltern or minoritized) generally stigmatized or minimized in the period’s literature; and adapting Victorian sources to contemporary media. Reading both Victorian and neo-Victorian fiction, we will explore what is at stake in these revisions and adaptations and what critical frameworks can help us interpret their effects. Students will have an opportunity to try their hands at their own Neo-Victorian adaptation.