English 417	Kathie Linehan
Victorian Fiction & Print Culture	Rice 10, x8578/flinehan
Fall 1998	Hrs M 3:30-4:30, Th 4:30-5:30

Goal. This course aims to deepen appreciation of theme and craft in selected works of Victorian fiction by viewing them in relation to material and historical realities of the burgeoning Victorian literary market. As a seminar, the course relies heavily on discussion and will encourage hands-on investigation of topics oriented to individual students' interests.

Required texts:

Course Reader, purchasable in English Dept. Office, Rice 130 ($5.50)

Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Broadview ed. (originally published in

20 weekly installments April-August 1854, in Household Words

George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical life, Oxford Univ. Press (originally

published in five monthly installments in Blackwood's Magazine, 1857)

George Gissing, New Grub Street, Everyman's originally published

as a novel in three-volumes ("triple decker") in 1891.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,

Washington Square Press; originally published as a

single-volume novella in both hardcloth and paper in 1886

Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Beach of Falesa," Stanford Univ. Press

ed. Menikoff, originally published under the title "Uma," in

The Illustrated London News, 1892.

Recommended:

W. M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Norton Critical Edition (originally published in twenty successive paperbound parts in 1847)

Requirements:

1) Regular, involved attendance,

2) Rotating mini-presentations to kick off discussion,

3) a 4-6 page write-up on Victorian journal comparison, due Oct. 9, 4) a 12-14 page final paper or exhibition project, due in completed draft form Nov. 5.

Schedule:

Th Sep 3: Introduction: Thackeray's string and Dickens' pool of blood

UNIT ONE: THE MATERIAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF THE TEXT (serialization, magazine contexts, the pictorial element)

Tu Sep 8:

From Reader: McGann, Hughes & Lund In Hard Times, pp. 26-28 (part-issue plan) and 317-326 (Dickens letters). Then begin reading the novel IN PARTS: Try to take in the first installment (ch. 1-3) all in one reading; then give yourself a several-hour or overnight break, then take in the next installment (ch. 4-5) in another reading session. N.B.: MARK UP THOSE COURSE READINGS! UNDERLINE, HIGHLIGHT, TALK TO YOURSELF IN THE MARGINS!

Questions to be thinking about:

--McGann: What's your picture of what's he's advocating as a way of approaching literature? Does any of it hit home with you?

--Hughes & Lund: What points do you find most interesting? persuasive? suspect?

--Hard Times: How does reading in those part installments work for you? When you absorb the parts in separate stages, do they carry any particular punch or rhythm as units? What most or least engages you in the text? What do Dickens' letters contribute to your feel for the book?

Th Sept 10: Meet in SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, 4th floor Mudd. We'll look at Hard Times in its original publication format in Household Words, plus a first book edition of the novel, another Dickens novel in part issues, a sample "triple decker," and a few periodicals, including a volumes of The London Illustrated News from 1851. Head of Special Collections Whitney Pape will be on hand to give some pointers about how to use the collection.

Preparatory assignment: sometime before this class, poke around among the OPEN STACK British 19th century periodicals in Mudd, checking especially issues from the early 1850's. PICK ONE early 1850's journal (e.g. 1851 Punch, or 1854 Athenaeum) in which you come across something that helps put you in touch with the times, especially in ways that connect with Hard Times. Make a note of your journal and the page of the relevant item. THEN ON YOUR WAY UP TO SPECIAL COLLECTIONS for this Thursday class, PICK UP YOUR JOURNAL AND BRING IT ALONG. We'll save fifteen or twenty minutes to share findings.

Here are some recommendations on journals you might look at:

Athenaeum (covers literature, science, fine arts; includes ads, reviews)

Fraser's (mostly literary)

New Monthly Magazine (a bit dry and talky, but still might be of interest)

North British Review (ditto)

Punch (the famous humor magazine which carried on into the 20th ct.); N.B.

on reserve Richard Altick's recent Punch . . . 1841-1851.

Quarterly Review (again, high-toned and talky)

Meanwhile, also forge ahead on your reading of Hard Times

Tu Sept 15: From Reader: Curtis and Punch cartoon

In Hard Times, pp. 382-385 (Morley piece from Household Words) and the main text through Part I, ch. 14.

Questions: What's the effect of reading ch. 7-8 in the novel alongside the Morley piece?

--Where do you see issues of words, letters, literacy, and reading surfacing thematically in the book? How do they reflect--or how does Dickens bend them to reflect--on the social world of the novel?

--Where do you see Dickens' visual imagination most significantly in play--e.g. scene painting, portraiture, etc.?

--The Punch cartoon reflects a late nineteenth century aspect of what Curtis calls "urban semiotics"; are any versions of this present in Dickens' mid-century Coketown?

--How is your sense of time (or Dickens' treatment of time) shaping up now?

 

UNIT TWO: THE HISTORICAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF THE TEXT

(industrialization, condition of England debate)

Th Sep 17: From Reader: Compton's Encyclop. entry, Mitchell Chronology

In Hard Times, Carlyle, "Signs" (339-345); Dickens' "On Strike" (372-381) and manuscript notes (418-19). Also scan the Introduction and finish Book Two in the novel (through p. 244).

Questions: How is your view of the novel affected (if at all) by the glimpses today's readings give you of its topicality?

-What differences or similarities in style and/or message do you see between Dickens' journalistic account of the Preston strike (pp. 372-381) and his treatment of union issues in the novel?

Tu Sep 22: Finish reading Hard Times. Read also Reviews #1, 2, 6, 7, in Broadview.

Questions: Does the ending complement or distract from what seems the topical thrust of the book?

--Do the reviews read easily for you or do they themselves seem historically distant? How might they help you build a picture of the readers towards whom Dickens was writing?

Th Sep 24: Read the original first serialized installment of Vanity Fair, i.e. chapters 1-4, preceded by the opening part illustration (fool on a barrel preaching to a ragtag crowd). For now, SKIP the frontispiece illustration (fool looking into a mirror) and facing text, "Before the Curtain," both of which were introduced only after the part installments had finished and the book was re-presented to the public as a whole.

Read also the first serialized installment of"Janet's Repentance" (in Scenes of Clerical Life), i.e., ch. 1-4.

Read also from the Joan Stevens essay at the back of the Norton Vanity Fair the following pages: 777-82, 786-89, 794-97.

Questions: How do the first four-chapter units in each of these novels read for you as opening installments in a serialized story?

--What picture do you get of the way each of these books bridges to the mid-19th century present of its original readers DESPITE its use of an historical setting two or three decades earlier? (VFr is published 1847 but set ca. 1814-27; JR is published 1857 but set ca. 1832.)

--What are your first impressions about what Thackeray's illustrations add to the text?

--What picture do you get in those opening installments of the role that reading plays in the lives of the characters, especially male or female?

--How much sense are you able to make of the 1832 religious turf wars portrayed in "Janet's Repentance"? What feeling do you get about what they represent for 1857 readers?

UNIT THREE: BREAKING INTO THE LITERARY MARKET IN MIDCENTURY

Tu Sep 29: Next installments: Vanity Fair, ch. 5-7; "Janet's Repentance" ch. 5-9.

From Reader, read also the brief biographies of Dickens, Eliot, and Thackeray and the two Eliot pieces (extracts from "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" and the brief autobiographical account, "How I Came to Write Fiction").

Questions: What strikes you about the way aspects of class background, education, sex, and work experience stand as helps or hindrances to published authorship as you look comparatively across the thumbnail sketch biographies of these three novelists?

--In VFr and "JR," what impressions are you picking up about narrative persona (tone, sex, positioning, self-image or self-confidence) in relation to authorial purpose?

Th Oct 1: In Vanity Fair, touch down on several later points in the plot by reading chs. 35-36, ch. 53, and ch. 67. Alongside that, "read" illustrations throughout the novel, noting especially those on pp. 91, 94, 119, 123, 196, 243, 244, those occurring throughout chs. 35-36, and those on 370, 410, 435, 439, 455, 471, 512, 583, 619, 626, 662, 681, 686, 688, 689. Then read Colby's "Reception Summary, " pp. 745-51.

From Reader, read the excerpt from Judith Fisher's "Image versus Text" essay.

Questions: How do the illustrations "read" for you? What pleasure or interest do you find in any particular ones, and what tone or emotion is evoked for you? How do you feel about Fisher's thesis that they sometimes offer a countervoice or counterperspective to the text that heightens our awareness of the slipperiness of interpretation?

--Does Colby's "reception summary" afford any perspectives on how the relation of illustration to text might be affected by the tastes and morals of Thackeray's immediate readership? (Under this heading, it could be interesting to consider what tone he had already set with his readers in his Punch persona--for example in the "Punch's Prize Novelists" satires he produced 3 April-9 October 1847.)

Fri Oct 2, 4:30: public lecture by Jerome McGann, followed by discussion session. Details TBA. Please count on attending.

UNIT FOUR: CLOSE-UP WORK WITH VICTORIAN PERIODICALS

Tu Oct 6 and Th Oct 8: oral presentations from seminar members comparing either an early Victorian and late Victorian issue of the same periodical or same-year issues of two different types of periodicals. (Further guidelines TBA.)

Friday Oct 9: submit 4-6 page write-up based on your oral presentation. (Schedule a conference with me by October 1 if you have a preference for doing your 4-6 page paper along other lines.)

UNIT FIVE: FOLLOW-UP ON "JANET'S REPENTANCE"

Tu Oct 13: "Janet's Repentence" ch. 10-14 and 15-21.

Questions: How does the story work with concepts of time and human development? Does it feels as though serialization is geared to that?

--What's your sense of how the narrative voice and persona develop (including in terms of its gender dimensions) in relation to the reader?

--What tonalities in the story appeal to you or put you off?--e.g. irony, lyricism, emotional appeals?

Th Oct 15: "Janet's Repentance," conclusion (ch. 22-28).

Questions: In its treatment of spiritual and moral education, how does this story compare with the other two novels we've looked at so far? What grounds for popular interest or popular appeal do you see in this as compared to the other two? What light is shed on that by considering Hard Times as a Household Words type of story and"Janet's Repentance" as a Blackwood's Magazine-type piece?

UNIT SIX: 1850 TO 1890: THE EXPLOSION OF COMPETITIVE PUBLISHING

Tu Oct 27: From Reader: Altick and Eliot

Gissing, New Grub Street, ch. 1-9

What does the novel show of the big-picture development of the literary market suggested by Altick and Eliot? What differences in style and content from our earlier works do you find most striking? What picture are you getting of how society itself has changed?

Th Oct 29: From Reader, Nigel Cross

New Grub Street, ch. 10-18 (pause at the end of ch. 12 to consider how the first volume works as a unit)

Tu Nov 3: New Grub Street, ch. 19-27

Th Nov 5: finish New Grub Street

UNIT SEVEN: THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF WRITING AND THE REFORM OF COPYRIGHT

Tu Nov 10: Have read all of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde plus the excerpts from Stevenson's letters and essays contained on pp. 93-95. What genre or genres seem best define this tale? E.g. Gothic fiction, science fiction, detective story, allegory, fable, etc? Why?

Th Nov 12: From Reader: Brantlinger and Arata

How persuasive do you find either of these interpretations, and why?

Tu Nov 17 (or evening session): likely co-presentation with Augusta Rohrbach looking comparatively at British & American markets and copyright issues

DUE TUES NOV 17: ONE-PAGE PROPOSAL FOR FINAL PROJECT/PAPER

Th Nov 19: The Beach of Falesa

Tu Nov 24: Finish Beach; then read through RLS letters included in the course Reader. How might the market and audience considerations reflected in those letters factor into a critical appreciation of the story?

(Nov. 26 off for Thanksgiving; Dec. 3 off to work on papers)

Th Nov 5: Bring completed drafts of papers to workshop

Tu Dec 8 and Th Dec 10: In-class presentations on final projects; course evaluations.