Course Overview

Fin de siècle, or late nineteenth and early twentieth century, London was a city in a time of change.  The ending of the Victorian era and the beginning of early modernism saw artists and writers drawn into revolutionary artistic movements including aestheticism and decadence.   Theatrical performance, the Arts and Crafts movement, art innovation, detective novels, the “Wilde trials”, journalism, and the rise of the “New Woman” all created sensation across a changing cultural landscape.  The Irish were there: George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, George Moore and Bram Stoker, John Lavery and William Orpen engaged with artistic and literary innovation. Madam Blavatsky’s salon, the Rhymers’ Club and the city stage provided settings for artistic experiment. This course will explore a fascinating time, bringing together the works of writers and artists and follow change in the city as it happens.  We will immerse ourselves in the era through a wide variety of works, dipping into, for example, newspapers and magazines of the day,  paintings, extracts from novels and plays, photographs and illustrations. We will encounter Irish writers and artists amongst others including Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Conan Doyle, Millicent Fawcett, 'Michael Field' (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper), Thomas Hardy, Alice Meynell, John Singer Sargent , H. G. Wells, Wyndham Lewis and Henry Gaudier-Brzeska. In this course you will see and hear London at the end of a century and an era, and at the beginning of a new age.

Course Schedule 

Classes will be delivered online on Wednesdays 10.20am-12.30pm for six weeks from 29 September to 3 November.

•  Introduction: Victorian London
•  Literature, the detective novel and science fiction
•  Aestheticism and  decadence
•  Victorian London and the Visual Arts
•  Revolutionaries, suffrage and the “new woman”
•  Clubs, salons and the stage

Course Lecturers

Dr. Emma Bidwell has a Ph.D in English. She is the Director of “Screening Ireland”, a programme offered by the University of Limerick. She also lectures on a Women’s Studies MA programme. Dr. Bidwell teaches for University College Cork, the University of Limerick, and for her own West Cork College.

Entry Requirements

Applicants must be at least 18 years old at course commencement.

Assessment

Short courses are not assessed. Students will receive a UCC Certificate of Attendance upon completion.

Closing Date for Application

Friday 17 September

Contact Details for Further Information

Regina Sexton, Phone: 021-4904700, Email: shortcourses@ucc.ie