The Nineteenth-Century British Novel
Spring 2012

Scholars generally hail the nineteenth century as the Age of the Novel. From serious triple-decker masterpieces to popular sensation fiction, the novel dominated the Victorian literary landscape. The nineteenth-century novel is certainly entertaining, but it is also a rich cultural archive that reveals much about Victorian society and its chief preoccupations. We will investigate this intersection of fiction and culture this semester.

This course will be a selective tour of some of the best fiction from the latter half of the nineteenth century. These are fantastic texts, but this is not a course for those who are lazy or uninterested. Prospective students are strongly cautioned to consider the lengths of these novels and the relatively brisk pacing of the class. Students can expect, on average, to read approximately 250-350 pages per week, every week, for thirteen weeks; students should plan to read approximately 50 pages per day (including weekends!) to keep up with the reading. Short quizzes and in-class activities will be offered to encourage students to keep pace with this rigorous schedule. In addition to these less “formal” assignments, course requirements include active participation in class discussion. The bulk of the grade, however, will be determined by a combination of take-home exams and formal papers.

Required Texts (Please purchase the editions listed below)
Charles Dickens, Bleak House ()
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights ()
George Eliot, Middlemarch ()
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (Oxford, 1999)
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (Oxford, 2009)
Robert Louis Steveson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ()

Schedule of Readings
10 January
Introduction and Course Overview

17 January
Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday: No Class Meeting

23 January
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847)

30 January
Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
Parts I-VI (Chapters 1-19), Pages 13-315

6 February
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Parts VII-XIII (Chapters 20-42), Pages 315-669

13 February
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Parts XIV-XX (Chapters 43-60), Pages 669-989

20 February
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868)
"First Period" (pages 1-190)

27 February
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
“Second Period” (pages 191-466)

5 March
No Class Meeting: Work on Exam/Paper

9 March
Take-Home Midterm Exam Due by 9:00 pm.

12 March
Spring Break

19 March
George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)
Books One and Two (pages 5-225)

26 March
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Books Three through Five (pages 229-531)

2 April
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Books Six through Eight (pages 533-838)

9 April
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891)
Phases 1-4  (pages 1-178)

16 April
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Phases 5-7 (pages 178-314)

23 April
Robert Lous Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1883)