SIGNIFICANT OTHERS:: VICTORIAN CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS - 2025/6

Module Overview

This interdisciplinary module, focused on Victorian creative partnerships, explores connections between texts, individuals, couples, circles and movements. It investigates the ways in which female and male figures worked in various forms of partnership: as spouses, siblings, friends and lovers. It examines a range of Victorian texts including poems, short stories, plays, novels and novellas, letters and diaries as well as visual texts. It engages with the themes of gender, sexuality, identity, power, partnership, co/authorship and readership. The module introduces students to contextual debates about sexual politics, gender and representation in the nineteenth-century, and seeks to understand how writers responded and contributed to them. It also reads nineteenth-century figures and texts in relation to more recent feminist and gender theory, revealing their continued cultural importance. Authors studied include: the Brownings, the Brontës, George Eliot and George Henry Lewes, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, the Rossettis, Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, and Michael Field.

Module provider

Literature & Languages

Module Leader

LAZZARI Gabriele (Lit & Langs)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 6

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 1

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content includes: A Marital Poetic Partnership: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning; A Filial Poetic Partnership: Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë;A Common-law Marriage of Writers: George Eliot and George Henry Lewes; ¿Unequal Partners¿: Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins; Pre-Raphaelite Partnerships: Christina Rossetti & Gabriel Rossetti

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

n/a

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate achievement of the module learning outcomes.Seminar discussion with ongoing tutor feedback is designed to assess professional/practical skills in communicating ideas orally and transferable skills in working individually and collaboratively. It also assesses subject knowledge relating to formal, contextual, critical, and theoretical approaches to the study of Victorian literature. Seminars also assess cognitive/analytical skills in critical thinking and in the analysis of literary form and language.The formative exercise, a close reading of a visual text presented to peers, assesses subject knowledge relating to the close analysis of art (painting) inspired by literary sources (poetry). It also assesses cognitive/analytical skills in critical thinking, and professional/practical skills in communicating ideas orallyThe 3000-word essay or creative writing portfolio also assesses these skills, as well as subject knowledge relating to formal, contextual, critical, and theoretical approaches to the study of Victorian poetry and prose. It also assesses transferable skills, namely the ability to conduct research for written work in an organised and critical fashion and to develop and communicate imaginative and rigorous arguments (for the essay), or to produce a piece of prose or poetry inspired by a figure/work on the module, along with a critical commentary. The summative assessment for this module consists of:

• essay (3000 words) OR 
• creative writing (2400 words or equivalent) + critical commentary (600 words) 

The formative assessment for this module consists of:

• visual close reading presentation

 Formative ¿feed forward¿ is provided through seminar discussions, tutor feedback in seminars, and feedback on the visual close reading exercise and presentations. 

Module aims

• Develop an understanding of the formation and proliferation of creative partnerships (between man and woman, woman and woman, and man and man) in the Victorian period
• Deepen an understanding of the relationship between professional literary practice, partnership and politics in the Victorian period
• Expand knowledge of how Victorian writers responded to and informed contemporary gender debates and early feminist discourse
• Show how a diverse range of literary and visual texts can be read in conjunction and from more recent theoretical perspectives in order to advance students¿ critical thinking and application of theoretical frameworks to literature
• Advance oral and written communication skills
• Develop advanced skills in close reading and analysis of literary texts
• Strengthen students¿ ability to undertake independent and collaborative research, including using digital tools and online materials
• Enable students to explore how nineteenth-century partnerships and texts relate to wider historical, social, and cultural contexts

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to deliver specialist subject knowledge, to develop advanced cognitive and analytical skills, and to develop in-depth transferable, practical, and professional skills. The delivery of the module through two-hour lecture-seminars places an emphasis on student-led learning, and enables students to develop advanced skills in analysing, communicating, and debating ideas.The module content is research-led and asks students to develop a sophisticated understanding of formal, contextual, critical, and theoretical approaches to the study of Victorian partnerships and texts. It supports and advances students¿ independent study through the use of digital resources.This relates to the programme learning and teaching strategy, which, at FHEQ Level 6, is designed to develop subject knowledge through two-hour seminars and to develop transferable and professional skills, with an emphasis on sophisticated student-led involvement, critical analysis and discussion.The learning and teaching methods include:

• 2-hour seminar per week x 11 weeks

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: ELI3077

Other information

Surrey's Curriculum Framework is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability and Resourcefulness and Resilience. This module is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills and capabilities in the following areas:

Resourcefulness and Resilience: The module¿s concept of creative partnerships ¿ focusing specifically on collaboration and community in Victorian literature and culture ¿ is also integral to its pedagogy and assessment. The module both studies historical figures who worked together and encourages students to work together ¿ through, for example, the collaborative formative assessment ¿network map¿ (detailed below) and in regular pair or group work in student-led seminars. This helps build confidence in communication, collaboration, organization and presentation, offering valuable experience of working with others in academia (which often involves individual/solitary work in literary studies) while also preparing students for professional careers. Collaborative activities are designed to build resilience, facilitate supportive peer-led learning, and develop employability skills. The module¿s focus on a diverse range of figures (same-sex and queer couples as well as married couples and sibling partnerships) and on a wide range of different types of texts (including poetry, life writing and painting) as well as diverse critical voices encourages new perspectives on human relationships, gender identities and sexual orientations, challenging dominant patriarchal structures and narratives in the Victorian period and today. It fosters an open-mindedness and critical thinking that is valuable to the study of literature and to life. Workshop-style sessions on reading art ¿ which is fundamental and unique to the module (but not a pre-requisite) ¿ are built into seminars, developing interdisciplinary skills and discourses that prepare students for the final essay, for the site visit to Watts Gallery ¿ Artists¿ Village in week 12, and potentially for future careers in art gallery, museum and heritage sectors. In its focus on Victorian poetry and life writing, this module builds on ¿ and prepares student for ¿ modules that share a focus on this period and/or these genres across the programme at all levels.

Digital Capabilities: This module is interdisciplinary in its exploration of literary and visual creative partnerships (artists and writers), and as such, necessitates students¿ use of digital platforms and resources to access online archives and museum/art gallery collections dedicated to nineteenth-century literature and visual culture. Students are offered supplementary learning materials such as links to sites and blogs on surreylearn, intended for seminar preparation and revision; this online provision supports individual and collaborative learning and research, and builds on students¿ competency in engaging with surreylearn on all previous modules. These resources are used in order to conduct ¿live research¿ in flipped-learning seminars (e.g. sourcing secondary material, or viewing artworks related to literary texts) either individually or in groups, according to the text/task. They may also be used in the creation of the formative assessment ¿network map¿ ¿ done collaboratively in pairs, enacting the module theme of partnership ¿ using powerpoint/Prezzo to visualising connections between the Victorian artists, authors and activists. These maps are amalgamated at the end of the module and uploaded to surreylearn for the benefit of all students on the module, demonstrating a collective student output and creating a new student-led online learning resource that can be used for revision and further study on the programme. It is designed to develop students¿ digital skills and confidence in locating, accessing and analysing online resources in and beyond seminars, advancing students¿ ability to conduct independent research and supporting original work in seminars and essays. The more advanced digital skills developed on this module offer practical, transferable skills for employment and ensure proficient use of technologies central to a range of careers beyond academia. This module equips students with skills and subject knowledge relevant to level 4, 5 and 6 modules featuring Victorian figures, texts and movements (e.g. Aestheticism, Deacdence, the women¿s suffrage movement).

 

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2025/6 academic year.