Subtitle: Culture and Society in Nineteenth-Century Fiction

We will read a number of compelling and influential short stories and novels of the nineteeth century, and consider ways in which they embodied changes in marriage and family patterns, industrialization and migration into overcrowded cities, and new directions in painting, design, architecture and the decorative arts, as well as a number of other significant aspects of everyday Victorian life.

In the process, we will also consider questions of style, form, poetics, aesthetics, narrative voice, framing devices, intended audience(s), critical reception and rhetorical and dramatic elements, as well as new modes of publication.

The works to be read will include:

Walter Scott, “The Two Drovers”

Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton

Mary Prince, The True History of Mary Prince

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

George Eliot, Mill on the Floss

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

William Morris, News from Nowhere

Samuel Butler, Erewhon

A. Byatt, Possession

and (as time permits) short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant,

Rudyard Kipling, Flora Steel, George Egerton, Sarah Grand, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

I will ask students to read these works with care, participate actively in class discussions, post several chapter summaries and reading responses on the course’s web site, and write two six-plus-page-essays.