The Origins of Climate Crisis: Ecology in Victorian Literature

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Produce close readings of a range of nineteenth-century literary texts
• Compose historically-informed analyses of texts
• Practice researching across disciplines and sectors
• Think critically about literary texts
• Compare literary genres and modes
• Comprehend some of the main geo-political contexts of climate change and sustainability

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Ecocritical approaches to literary study
• The relationships between a range of nineteenth-century literary modes and genres including: Condition of England fiction, historical drama, lyrical poetry and the ode, literary essays and speeches, the pastoral and realist fiction.
• The significance of empire and ecology in nineteenth-century literature and culture

This module explores the origins of the climate crisis though literature and across time. It begins with present-day conceptions of climate change and moves backwards, considering the origins of the climate crisis in nineteenth-century literature and culture (‘yesterday’) and the way Victorian texts grapple with the environmental changes that confront us now (‘today’). We conclude by exploring how late nineteenth-century writers imagined the environments of the future (‘tomorrow’).

As we travel from the present to the past and back again, we will explore industrial changes to the rural landscape, the growth of the carbon economy and rise of steam power, ecologies of empire and colonial cultivation practices, and apocalyptic visions of cities submerged in water and skies veiled by smoke.

You will read poems, plays, essays, and novels and learn about literary movements and genres including: realism, ‘condition of England’ fiction, historical drama, science fiction, and decadent writing.

Representative texts may include:

• - Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement (2016)
• - Thomas Hardy The Woodlanders (1887) and ‘The Darkling Thrush’ (1900)
• - George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860)
• - Dinabandhu Mitra, ‘Nil Darpan; or, The Indigo Planting Mirror, A Drama’ (1861)
• - Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1854)
• - John Ruskin, ‘The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’ (1884)
• - Alice Meynell, London Impressions (1898)
• - M.P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud (1901)

Teaching methods will include:

• - Lectures, seminars, learning support hour and one-to-one tutorials (consultations)

Learning methods will include:

• - Group work
• - Possible site visits contingent on the latest government guidance and availability
• - Engagement with guest speakers from areas such as environmental science, the heritage sector, and public policy groups to take place online or in-person and contingent on current circumstances.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Essay proposal

• Assessment Type: Formative
• Feedback:
• Final Assessment: No
• Group Work: No

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.