Spring 2001	Kathie Linehan
	Rice 10, (440) 775-8578 Office hours Spring 2001: MW 3:30-4:30 or by appointment
MWF 2:30 King 235	E-mail: katherine.linehan@oberlin.edu

19TH CENTURY BRITISH FICTION

This course studies the development of the British novel through the Victorian period (1837-1901) with attention to the craft of the works as well as their relation to social and literary context. The class will be taught by a combination of lecture (asterisks below) and discussion. Your participation in the course requires engaged class attendance, on-time submission of a series of Cr/NE prep papers (mostly assigned two classes in advance at 1-2 week intervals), a 2-3 page "Victorian periodicals" assignment, two 6-8 page papers, and an in-class final exam (see next page). 4 credit hours.

TEXTS:

George Eliot, Middlemarch (Penguin)

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Ed.)

Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Penguin)

Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (Norton Critical Ed.)

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Penguin)

George Gissing, The Odd Women (Norton)

ON RESERVE: Sally Mitchell, Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia

Herbert Tucker, ed, A Companion to Vict. Lit. & Culture

SCHEDULE : (NB: Proportion your reading to the number of classes per text.)

Feb 5	Introduction
Feb 7, 9, 12*, 14, 16, 19*, 21, 23	Middlemarch (in 8 Books; 1 per class)
Feb 26, 28*, Mar 2, 5	Wuthering Heights
Mar 7	NCE WHts selected poems, reviews, criticism
Mar 9	Hard Times, ch. 1-12
Mar 12	No class; conferences on papers
WEDS., MARCH 14	NB FIRST PAPER DUE, 6-8 pp. double-spaced, on Middlemarch or Wuthering Heights (see below)
Mar 14*, 16, 19	Hard Times (remainder)
Mar 21	MUDD (4th flr Spec Coll) Vict periodicals
Mar 23	TBA
	SPRING BREAK!! REJOICE!!
Apr 2, 4	Transition mini-lect; Jude the Obscure, Part 1
Apr 6	No class; work on Vict periodicals assignmt
MON., APRIL 9	NB VICT. PERIODICALS ASSIGNMENT DUE, 2-3 pp.
Apr 9*, 11, 13, 16	Jude the Obscure (remainder)
Apr 18	NCE Jude, selected poems, reviews, criticism
Apr 20. 23	Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Apr 25	Jekyll & Hyde, background materials (xerox)
Apr 27, May 2, 4, 7	The Odd Women
May 9	No class; conferences on papers
May 11	Review session plus course evaluations
TUES., MAY 15	NB SECOND PAPER DUE AT ABSOLUTE LATEST (see below)
THURS., MAY 17, 2 p.m.	TWO HOUR IN-CLASS FINAL EXAM

1) GRADED PAPERS. The paper due on March 14 should deal with either Middlemarch or Wuthering Heights. The final paper can deal with any one of the four novels read subsequently. The content of the paper SHOULD NOT HEAVILY OVERLAP what we've covered in class lecture or discussion. (You're responsible for knowing what class coverage consists in.)

a) March 14 paper: Make this one a critical commentary: an exegesis of some portion or aspect of the book that can add something to the understandings brought forward in class. You are welcome to do a close reading of a restricted portion of the text (e.g. a single chapter in either novel&emdash;though I'd then ask you to analyze what's going on there with one eye on larger issues in the book). You are also welcome to work on a larger scale with the book, focusing on some overarching issue, theme, or question (possible topics to be suggested in class). Last point: Include this paper AT LEAST ONE reference to an extratextual source of information. For Wuthering Heights, it might be an item in the NCE. Or for either novel, it might be a reference to an article you've found relevant to your topic in a critical journal. Or it might be an informational article in one of the books on reserve, e.g. in Tucker: "Adolescence," "Death," "Victorian Sexualities," Under Victorian Skins," "On the Parapets of Privacy"; or in Mitchell: "Clothing and Fashion," "Death and Funerals," "Dialect Writing," "Education, Women's," "Evangelical Movement," "Family," "Medical Practice/Medical Science," "Romanticism," "Womanhood." Midterm papers late without prior permission are downgraded half a grade per day.

b) May 15 paper. Three possibilities. First, this one can be another critical commentary. Second, it could be a special project evaluating materials on Jekyll and Hyde (details in class). Third, it could be a paper oriented towards primary research, such as developing explanatory footnotes for a page or two of novel text, or using an item in a Victorian periodical to provide a point of entry into some aspect of the text. That item could be an article, an ad, an illustration, whatever: the point is to dig into a sense of how historical and cultural conditions help to shape the aesthetic. NO EXTENSIONS POSSIBLE WITHOUT FORMALLY FILED INCOMPLETE.

2) CREDIT/NO ENTRY ASSIGNMENTS.

a) Prep papers. These are very brief bits of writing (one-page, informal) meant to serve as warm-ups to SAME DAY discussion. Usually I'll ask you to bring them in with you; occasionally they'll be done as in-class paragraphs. I collect them basically just to read them quickly and record them on the grand scale of: credit plus/credit/credit-minus/no entry. You can miss two without penalty; more than that will affect your grade.

b) Victorian periodicals assignment. If the past is a foreign country, this is one of the best ways I've found to travel there. To give you a bit of structure for the trip, I ask that you either compare two different periodicals for the same year or two several-decades apart issues of the same periodical, focussing on some tell-tale features of content or format or apparent implied readership. Further details in class.

3) FINAL EXAM. Approximately one-fourth short-answer questions, one-fourth best-guess quote identifications (points for good reasons even if inaccurate), one-half essay question (several possibilities suggested as basis for comparing several novels from the course).