Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) History of British Literature (Elizabethan to Victorian Age) Syllabus - Mumbai University 2026
Loading syllabus...
Syllabus for History of British Literature (Elizabethan to Victorian Age)
The University sets this paper under Scheme III only, so your college may not run it.
Practise with the Semester 6 past papers. They are from the old syllabus, so check each topic against this one.
Module 1: Elizabethan and Jacobean Periods
- 1 Renaissance, Humanism, Reformation
- 2 Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama - Features, Contribution of Major Playwrights
- 3 Revenge Plays
- 4 The Comedy of Humours – Contribution of Ben Jonson
- 5 Elizabethan Poetry - Sonnets, Pastoral
Module 2: The Restoration Age and The Neo-Classical Age (1660–17
- 1 Comedy of Manners – Features and Major Contributors
- 2 Heroic Drama – Features and Major Contributors
- 3 Sentimental Comedy and Anti-Sentimental Comedy: Characteristics and major Contributors
- 4 Factors responsible for the rise of the novel in the 18 th century and the contribution of the “Four Wheels of the English Novel”
- 5 Neo-Classical Poetry – Features and Contribution of the major poets
Module 3: Romantic Age
- 1 Salient Characteristics of Romanticism
- 2 Romantic Poetry – Characteristics and the contribution of the major Romantic Poets
- 3 Romantic Prose: Contribution of Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt etc.
- 4 Novel Writing: Features and Contribution of Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott
- 5 Gothic Novel: Features and contribution of major novelists
Module 4: Victorian Age
- 1 Literary Tendencies of the Victorian Age
- 2 The Rise of the Novel – Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Contribution of Bronte Sisters
- 3 Victorian Poetry - Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold
- 4 Prose Writers and their contribution – Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Macaulay, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill
- 5 The Pre-Raphaelites
Reference Books
- 1 Alpers, Paul E. Elizabethan Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism (OUP: 1967)
- 2 Craig, Hardin. Ed. A History of English Literature Series. Literature of the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century 1660-1798.Vol III (London, Macmillan, 1969)
- 3 Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature (Secker and Warburg: London, 1960)
- 4 King, Bruce. Seventeenth Century English Literature (Macmillan: 1983).
- 5 Leggatt, Alexander. English Drama: Shakespeare to The Restoration 1590-1660 (Longman: Literature in English Series, 1988)
- 6 Mundra, J.N. & S.C. Mundra. A History of English Literature. (Vol. I, II, III), Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1997.
- 7 Perfitt, George. English Poetry of the Seventeenth Century (Longman: Literature in English Series, 1992)
- 8 Parry, Graham.The Seventeenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature. 1603-1700 (Longman: Literature in English Series, 1989)
- 9 Pooley, Roger. English Prose of the Seventeenth Century (Longman: Literature in English Series, 1992)
- 10 Ricks, Christopher. The Penguin History of English Literature Vol.3. (Penguin, 1993)
- 11 Roston, Murray. Sixteenth Century English Literature (Macmillan, 1983)