English 316: Early Victorian Fiction in Context                           Fall,  2004

 

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Professor John Olmsted

Rice 108

Office Hours:  TuTh 4:30-5:30 p.m.

                                        and by appt.

Phone:  775-8582

E-mail:  John.Olmsted@oberlin.edu

 

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Texts:

 

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights.  1847.

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre.  1847.

W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair.  1847-48.

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.  1849-50.

Carol Christ, ed.  The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age.  Seventh edition, volume 2B

 

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Aims of the Course:

 

Our aim in this course is to become more alert and responsive readers of fiction and poetry written in mid-nineteenth-century England.  We will place the works in their biographical, social and cultural context, paying particular attention to the demands and opportunities of parts publication, the function of illustration in the novels, and the evolving debates about male and female authorship.  Lectures will provide contextual information and tentative readings, but each participant will forge individual responses in the weekly journals and in class discussion.  The ultimate aim of the course is to provide you with a reading list for the rest of your lives and the skills to be subtle and emotionally involved readers.

 

Course policies and requirements:

 

Since we meet only twice a week and have a good deal of material to cover, it is essential that you not miss classes.  I don't believe in checking up on adults, but I do know from experience that people who miss classes write uninformed journals, receive poor grades and are generally, as the Victorians would say, bound for the gutter.

 

People who come late to class will earn my moral disapproval and lose the esteem  of their colleagues.  I will try desperately not to let my personal feelings on this issue intrude into my evaluation of your work, but so far I've been unable to do this.

 

Each Tuesday you will give me a two- to five-page journal, typed, proofread and elegantly expressed in full (in all senses of the word) sentences.  Each journal will discuss the texts assigned for that week and reflect back on the discussions of the previous week.  The implication of these assignments is that you will have done all of the reading for that week before you come to the Tuesday class, and that you will have attended to and reflected on the discussions of the previous week.  The discipline of the weekly paper is hard to get used to at first, but most participants in the course adapt quickly to the format and enjoy having a course where writing and reading are spread evenly over the entire semester.  Late journals will be downgraded.

 

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Class Schedule:

 

 

Week of

 

August 30                    Introduction

 

 

September 6                "The Victorian Age 1830-1901," Norton, 1043-1065.

Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott," "Locksley Hall" and "Ulysses," Norton, 1204-1208, 1219-1225, 1213-1214

William Holman Hunt painting on the cover of the Norton anthology

 

September 13              Tennyson, "Ask Me No More" and "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal," Norton, 1227-1228

Tennyson, In Memoriam, Norton, 1230-1232, and poems number 1, 3, 5, 7, 34, 56, 82, 95, 119, 130, and Epilogue

 

 

September 20              Browning, "Porphyria's Lover," 1349-1350, "The Laboratory," 1353-1355

Christina Rossetti, 1583-1605

                                        Emily Bronte, 1418-1425

                                        Wuthering Heights

 

September 27                    Wuthering Heights

                                       

 

October 4                     Wuthering Heights

From Norton, George Eliot, 1456-1469, "The Woman Question," 1719-1739, John Stuart Mill, 1155-1165

 

October  11                  The madwoman on the main floor

                                        Jane Eyre

 

October  18                  FALL BREAK

 

October  25                  Jane Eyre

 

November 1               The world made from within

                                        Arnold, 1479-1482, 1492-1498

                                        Vanity Fair

 

November 8                Vanity Fair

 

November 15                     Vanity Fair

 

November 22                    "These pages must show"

                                        Masculine heroism in David Copperfield

 

November 29                    David Copperfield

 

December 6                 David Copperfield

                                        Browning, "Andrea del Sarto," 1385-1390

 

December 13               Retrospect