This course introduces students to neo-Victorian fiction, a contemporary trend in Anglophone cultural production that critically revives 19th-century literature and culture, thus highlighting the complexity of the historical past and its connection to the present. It focuses on 20th- and 21st-century texts across various media that address enduring themes such as gender, social class, sexuality, race, and corporeality. These works highlight the relationship between the two eras, and explore the significance of the “reconstruction” of the 19th century for contemporary (British) society. More specifically, we will examine how these issues are inscribed in the spaces where the texts’ action unfolds, shaping the characters’ lived experiences and their sense of belonging. Drawing on contemporary theoretical approaches, we will understand space not as a neutral backdrop, but as a socially constructed category where both Victorian and contemporary ideological conceptions of normality, difference, and marginalization are reproduced. From the city, the street, and the domestic environment to the asylum, the laboratory, the circus, and the natural environment, we will examine how these spaces function as sites of conflict, control, confinement, and exclusion, while also creating possibilities for movement, resistance, and transformation. This journey through the Victorian era will demonstrate how a return to the past can contribute to a better understanding of the present and, perhaps, to envisioning a better future.
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