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Courses » Postgraduate » M. Phil in Popular Literature
Course Co-Director:
Dr Bernice Murphy
Contemporary literary culture is built on a paradox: that which most people read is that which critics value least. The novels of Dan Brown, Stephen King, and Agatha Christie, for instance to say nothing of J.K Rowling's Harry Potter books have long attracted many more readers than the winners of prestigious prizes such as the IMPAC or Man Booker. When readers were asked to name their favorite books in a recent BBC poll, they placed Tolkien's Lord of the Rings at number 1. And yet, such popular literature receives little critical attention, and wins few major prizes. How did this curious separation of popularity and value come about?
This course offers an opportunity for the advanced study of popular literature and its strange place within modern culture. It will trace the history of such popular genres as horror, science fiction, romance, and detective fiction, and offer a comprehensive introduction to contemporary theories of the popular. Participants will also choose from a range of specialist options on particular aspects of the popular, and study research methods. This M.Phil. will provide an invaluable base for those who wish to do further graduate study, but will also appeal to those who wish to develop their critical skills and knowledge in relation to an important aspect of contemporary culture.
The School of English has a large and active cohort of research students (some 50 in the current session), and two other taught Master's courses. Participants in this new M.Phil., the only one of its kind in these islands, will be part of a long-established and vigorous academic community. A weekly staff-graduate research seminar offers a lively forum for debate and the exchange of ideas. Postgraduates of the School of English routinely go on to further research and successful careers, in the academy and other fields.
For the most up-to-date information on the course, see our unofficial blogsite:
http://mphilpoplit.blogspot.com/
Admission Requirements :
Applicants would normally be expected to have a good honors degree (preferably an upper second or above) or an equivalent qualification. An application form can be downloaded from the TCD Graduate Studies website www.tcd.ie/Graduate_Studies/index.htm
Funding :
Applicants will be eligible to apply for a number of competitive University fellowships. Details of these are also available from the Graduate Studies site.
Course Structure :
The course will comprise 3 elements: (1) a core course meeting twice a week for 2 hours over 2 terms; (2) option courses meeting once a week for 2 hours participants will take one per term; (3) the research methods course.
The organization of the Core Course is as follows. The first term is structured historically, moving from the beginnings of mass literacy and print culture in the eighteenth century to the beginnings of Modernism in the twentieth, but largely focusing on the astonishing proliferation of popular literary forms in the nineteenth century, including Gothic fiction, serial and sensation fiction, empire fiction. The second term is structured generically, with each week being given over to a specific popular literary form, such as detective fiction, romance, science fiction, horror, children's literature, the bestseller. Both terms will begin with seminars discussing theories of popular literature and culture.
Assessment Regulations:
Assessment will be by a combination of coursework and dissertation. These will be broken down as follows:
Dissertation (40%): 15,000 words, by October 1, to be supervised by an appropriate member of staff.
Core Course (30%): 2 x 5000 word essay, due dates Friday week 1 of Hilary Term, Friday week 1 of Trinity Term,
Options (30%): 2 x 5000 word essay, due dates Friday week 1 of Hilary Term, Friday week 1 of Trinity Term.
Faculty and Research Interests :
Dr Aileen Douglas
Print culture, especially the history of writing; working class literature. Publications include Uneasy Sensations: Smollett and The Body. Chicago : Chicago University Press, 1995; Locating Swift: Papers from Dublin on the 250th Anniversary of the Death of Jonathan Swift, Dublin : Four Courts Press, 1998. [with Ian Campbell Ross and Patrick Kelly], as well as articles on eighteenth-century literature and culture.
Dr Kate Hebblethwaite
Victorian and Edwardian popular fiction; the relationship between literature and science in Britain (esp. 19th century); representations of Mars in popular literature and culture. Recent publications include articles on fin de siecle popular fiction and a forthcoming edited edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories published by Penguin Classics. Her current research is on Mars literature.
Dr Darryl Jones
Popular Literature; Gothic and horror fiction and film; nineteenth-century literature. Publications include Studying Poetry (Arnold/OUP, 2000) [with Stephen Matterson], Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film (Arnold/ Oxford UP, 2002), Jane Austen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), and articles on eighteenth and nineteenth-century fiction. His current research is on mass death and catastrophe literature, and more generally on Victorian and Edwardian fantasy literature.
Dr Jarlath Killeen
Victorian literature; Irish writing, especially Oscar Wilde; Gothic; Children's literature; faith and writing. Publications include Gothic Ireland (Four Courts, 2005), The Faiths of Oscar Wilde (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), and articles on nineteenth-century writing. He is currently working on a study of Wilde's fairy stories and a history of nineteenth-century Gothic literature.
Prof. Stephen Matterson
Stephen Matterson has published widely on many aspects of American literature, particularly on modern American poetry and on 19th century writing. His major research interests include the work of Herman Melville and the history of exceptionalism.
Recent publications include A Glossary of American Literature (Arnold/OUP, 2003), Studying Poetry (Arnold/OUP, 2000) [with Darryl Jones].
Dr Eve Patten
Contemporary Irish fiction, women's writing. Recent publications include A Glossary of Irish Studies , co-authored with John Goodby, Andrew Hadfield, Alex Davis, (Edward Arnold, 2003) and ''With Essex in India ?' Emily Lawless's Colonial Consciousness', European Journal of English Studies , (Swets and Zeitlinger, 1999), Vol. 3, No 3. She is currently working on Irish science and the Literary Revival; William Rowan Hamilton and Irish Romantic connections; and the life and fiction of Olivia Manning.
Dr Amanda Piesse
Renaissance theatre; reformation prose writing; children's fiction. Publications include Sixteenth-Century Identities ( Manchester , 2001), 'Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy' in A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture ed. Michael Hattaway. Oxford : Blackwell, 2000, and articles on many aspects of Renaissance drama culture.
Prof. Ian Campbell Ross
Eighteenth-century popular literature, especially the novel; detective fiction. Publications include Laurence Sterne: A Life (Oxford UP, 2001), Ireland and Scotland: Nation, Region, Identity (Dublin, 2001), [edited, with David Dickson, Seán Duffy and Cathal Ó Háinle], Locating Swift: Essays from Dublin on the 250th anniversary of the death of Jonathan Swift 1667-1745 (Dublin, 1998) [edited, with Aileen Douglas and Patrick Kelly] and Umbria: A Cultural History (London, 1996), and many articles on eighteenth-century literature.
Prof. Brenda Silver (Visiting Professor)
Brenda R. Silver is the Mary Brinsmead Wheelock Professor at Dartmouth College, where she teaches courses on modernism, postmodernism, hypertext fiction, and cyberculture. Her publications include Virginia Woolf Icon (Chicago, 1999); "Small Talk/New Networks: Virginia Woolf's Virtual Publics"; "Virginia Woolf://Hypertext"; and Virginia Woolf's Reading Notebooks (Princeton, 1983), as well as essays on Charlotte Brontë, E.M. Forster, John le Carré, anger, textual editing, and the edited volume, Rape and Representation (Columbia, 1991).
Book orders for the course are handled by:
Anthology Books
Meeting House Square
Temple Bar
Dublin 2
+353-1-6351422
www.anthologystore.com
info@anthologystore.com
Though you may also want to try Hodges Figgis and Waterstones, both in Nassau St .
Core Course Michaelmas Term 2006-2007
Week 1: Introduction to Theories of the Popular Dr Darryl Jones
i. Q. D. Leavis, Fiction and the Reading Public
ii. Curtis White, The Middle Mind: Why Consumer Culture is Turning Us Into the Living Dead ; Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good for You
Week 2: Print Culture and Popular Literacy Dr Aileen Douglas
Week 3: Women writers and popular fiction AD/DJ
i. Maria Edgeworth (AD)
ii. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (DJ)
Week 4: Romantic Gothic DJ
i. Matthew Lewis, The Monk
ii. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Week 5: Reading Week
Week 6: Victorian Popular Literature Dr Jarlath Killeen/ Dr Kate Hebblethwaite
i. Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (JK)
ii. The Sensation Novel: Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret (KH)
Week 7: Empire Literature KH
i. Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
ii. H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines
Week 8: Fin de Siècle Popular DJ/KH
i. George Du Maurier, Trilby (DJ)
ii. Richard Marsh, The Beetle , Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan (KH)
Week 9: Early Modernism and the Popular DJ/JK
i. Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (DJ)
ii. M. R. James, Ghost Stories (JK)
Core Course Hilary Term 2006-2007
Tuesdays 4-6 room 4047
Thursdays 12-2 room AP2.03
Week 1: Mass Culture and the Intellectuals Dr Paul Delaney
i. English Cultural Studies
ii. Frankfurt School
Week 2: The Origins of Genre JK/Professor Stephen Matterson
i. Janice Radway, Reading the Romance ; Cecilia Ahern, PS I Love You (JK)
ii. American genre fiction the Dime Novel' (SM)
Week 3: Detective Fiction Professor Ian Campbell Ross
Week 4: Horror Elizabeth McCarthy/Dara Downey
i. The horror short story Poe, LeFanu, Lovecraft (EMcC)
ii. Stephen King, Salem's Lot (DD)
Week 5: Reading Week
Week 6: Science Fiction and Fantasy Dr Bernice Murphy/Dr Helen Conrad O'Briain
i. Science Fiction (BM) photocopies pf stories will be provided in advance
ii. J R R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (HCOB)
Week 7: Popular Poetry Dr Philip Coleman
Week 8: Children's Literature Dr Amanda Piesse
See attached sheet for reading list.
Week 9: The Bestseller (JK)
i. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins, Left Behind
ii. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
The option courses running in this session are:
Michaelmas Term:
Cyberfiction/Cyberculture Prof. Brenda Silver
The Victorian Child Dr. Jarlath Killeen
Hilary Term:
Mapping the Myths of Mars Dr Kate Hebblethwaite
Lost Worlds: Victorian and Edwardian Fantasy Literature
Contact:
Diane Sadler
Executive Officer
M.Phil. in Popular Literature
The School of English
Room 4026
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Ireland
Tel: +353-1-896-1111
Fax: +353-671-7114
Email: sadlerd@tcd.ie
Dr Bernice Murphy
Course Director
M.Phil. in Popular Literature
The School of English
Room 4020
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Ireland
Tel: +353-1-896-1179
Fax: +353-671-7114
Email: drjones@tcd.ie
Last updated: November 2, 2009. Email: english@tcd.ie.