The course covers British literature and culture during Queen Victoria’s long reign, 1837-1901. This period witnessed one of the most radical changes in human history. This was the brilliant age of Charles Dickens, the Brontes, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred, Lord Tennyson - and many others. It was also the age of industrialisation, urbanization, steam power, class conflict, Darwin, religious crisis, imperial expansion, information explosion, bureaucratization, the golden age of bacteriology and modern medicine - and much more. New concepts of inter-personal relations, social structures, political mechanisms, ethics, gender divides, national boundaries, and ethnic awareness challenged and redefined existing values and experiences. These rapid changes transform ways of perceptions of the world, new sense of community, social norms and values, that makes the Victorian society into a unique period. At the same time, the unrelentingly fast pace of change revises the meaning of human existence that decides their future and the present we now live in.

This course serves as an introduction to a rich variety of Victorian texts and to the social and cultural contexts that produced them. Students will gain interpretive and analytical skills to enhance their understanding of novels and poetry written during one of the most complex and challenging periods in modern history. At the heart of the course lies a question that was as critical for Victorian readers as it is for us today: how do these changes make the Victorian society was then that in turn made us the way we are now? How does literature offer writers and readers ways to understand and even critique their society?

本課程計畫以當代文化理論的閱讀角度切入維多利亞時期英國文學文本，閱讀文學與電影文本中反映出的當代想像與恐懼，藉由當代文化理論與小說電影文本的比對閱讀，開發更具省思內涵的閱讀與思考角度。課程內容除教師講授之外，更著重討論與作業練習，透過辯證思考與實際練習，培養英文文章閱讀、欣賞與思考，並培養閱讀英文文章的習慣以及批判思考的能力;此外,課程設計並強調從閱讀訓練表達、思考、批判與寫作的能力，課堂中強調互動的課程進行方式將提供學生較多的思考與表達機會，期以培養對英語學習與研究的熱誠與信心。