Erin O'Connor

English 55: The Victorian Novel

Fall 2000
TR 9-10:30

This course provides an introduction to the Victorian novel. We will focus our attention on some of the major fiction of the period, attending to issues of style and form as well as to how the novel participates in Victorian debates about poverty, sexuality, morality, change, and imperialism. Tracking recurrent literary obsessions with questions of justice, nervousness, contagion, consumption, desire, depravity, and, not surprisingly, reading, we will study how the Victorian novel helped an emergent industrial society imagine itself into being.

Please familarize yourself with the course policies and requirements.

Sept. 7  Introduction

Sept. 12 Pickwick Papers
Sept. 14 Pickwick Papers

Sept. 19 Jane Eyre
Sept. 21 Jane Eyre

Sept. 26 Jane Eyre;Reviews
Sept. 28 Jane Eyre; Showalter, from Female Malady

Oct. 3  Amos Barton
Oct. 5  Amos Barton; "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists"; "Natural History of German Life"

Oct. 10  No Name
Oct. 12  No Name; FIRST PAPER DUE

FALL BREAK

Oct. 17  No Name
Oct. 19  No Name

Oct. 24  Our Mutual Friend
Oct. 26  Our Mutual Friend

Oct. 31  Our Mutual Friend; Selections from Mayhew
Nov. 2  Our Mutual Friend; Stallybrass and White, "The City"

Nov. 7  Our Mutual Friend; "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"
Nov. 9  Our Mutual Friend; Reviews of Dickens

Nov. 14 Daisy Miller
Nov. 16 Daisy Miller

Nov. 21 James, from the "Art of Fiction"
Nov. 23   THANKSGIVING

Nov. 28 Jude the Obscure
Nov. 30 Jude the Obscure

Dec. 5  Jude the Obscure
Dec. 7 Jude the Obscure; synthesis

Dec. 14 FINAL PAPER DUE