Code scolarité : LG20DM30
Victorian Britain: Society, Politics and Culture.
This course aims to examine the social and cultural diversity of Victorian Britain (1837-1901) through the analysis of textual and visual primary sources. The selection of documents will highlight the main concerns of the times: poverty and social injustice, industrialisation and urbanisation, political reform, as well as the place of women in society. The emphasis will be placed on social, political and cultural evolutions, labour conditions in the industrial age, living conditions in fast-growing cities, and the perception of these issues by various social actors.

Reading list:
Susie Steinbach, Understanding the Victorians (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2012)
Bernas, C., Gaudin, E., Poirier, F., The Document in British Civilisation Studies (Paris: Ophrys, 2000)
Briggs, Asa, Victorian People, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1955
Bury, L., Civilisation britannique au XIXème siècle, Paris : Hachette, 2001
Charlot M. & Marx R., La société victorienne (Paris : A. Colin, 1978)
Chris Williams, A Companion to Nineteenth Century Britain, London: Blackwell, 2004


 

Students are expected to :
- acquire a good grasp of the social, cultural, political and economic evolutions of nineteenth-century Britain.
- improve their critical and analytical understanding of historical documents, including visual ones.
- further develop contextualisation skills.
- develop an increasingly precise understanding of the points of view, intentions and strategies used by the author of a historical document.
- be able, by the end of the course, to provide a developed thesis about a document.

Le cours cherche à encourager les étudiants à entreprendre:
- la poursuite de l’apprentissage du commentaire de texte.
- la mise en relation d’un document et de son contexte de production (contextualisation)
- l'identification plus précise du point de vue, des objectifs et stratégies d’un auteur.
- la poursuite du travail d’apprentissage du commentaire de document avec notamment travail de la problématisation.
Le travail sur sources primaires et sources secondaires est poursuivi.