Course Description

This course will attempt to do two things: it will be a somewhat comprehensive survey of the nineteenth-century British novel and it will pay particular attention to a problem which preoccupied nineteenth-century writers -- the problem of the individual's relationship to the larger social totality. We will discuss novels which offer powerful fantasies of social integration in which the individual of high merit is rewarded with high social position; novels in which the social order is presented as nightmarish and the individual's integration is treated as a form of castration; novels in which the coherence of the social order itself is challenged; and novels which represent growth and development as a process of learning the rules of a language game.

Requirements

There are three major writing requirements comprising 85% of your grade: 2 critical papers, 3-5 pages in length (worth 20% each) and a final critical research paper, 10-15 pages in length (worth 45%). The due dates for these are marked in the syllabus below. In addition to these, 15% of your final grade will come from your participation during class discussions and from your grades on the quizzes, which will be given usually on the first day of discussion of a new novel. Attendance at all class meetings and active participation in class discussions are absolutely essential to success in this course. Please take comprehensive notes on your reading and have all reading assignments completed by the day on which they are due to be discussed.  Grading guidelines.  Paper deadlines for graduate students (Eng 545).

          Topics for paper #1

Topics for paper #2 (graduate students in Eng 545)

Topics for paper #2 (undergraduate students in Eng 452)

Topics for the critical/research paper

Books

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Bantam, 1992.
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Norton, 1987.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass. New York: Oxford UP.
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. New York: Penguin, 1968.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. New York: Norton, 1977.
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.
James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. New York: Norton, 1966.
 Stevenson, Robert Louis. Master of Ballantrae. New York: Penguin.
 

Most of these books are now available at the ASU Bookstore.  For secondary sources on the nineteenth century, see this bibliography.  For a useful bibliography of secondary sources that focuses particularly on nineteenth-century fiction, see Jay Clayton's Bibliography.

If you are interested in a readable introduction to basic theoretical issues, start by taking a look at  John Lye's Literary Theory: An Introduction and theGlossary of Literary Theory.   For links to sites that offer help with rhetorical terms or with mythological background, try  Starting Point for Literary Research.  Essays written for this class should conform to the conventions set out in MLA Format and Citation Guide. You may find it useful to consult a writing handbook. The following three are currently available on the Web:  Elements of Style,  Online English Grammar, and  Able Writer: A Rhetoric and Handbook. You should also make use of a dictionary such as the  WWWebster Dictionary.

For research, see  ASU's Hayden Library to start. For useful general sources of information consult the following:  Literary Resources Page,  Encyclopedia Britannica (ASU only), and  Voice of the Shuttle.  For online literary texts try these sites:  Modern English Collection,  The Online Books Page, and  Literature Online (Chadwyck-Healey; ASU only). The latter database is also useful for keyword, phrase, and line searches of British and American poetry, British drama, and some fiction (the online fiction collection is presently rather small).  You may also find theBritish History Timeline a useful source of historical information.  While there is not much online literary criticism currently available, you may find the IPL Online Literary Criticism site and Project MUSE useful.

(Required readings are in black type below following dates.  Links will take you to sites on the Internet that may provide useful background material)
 

M, 8/24: Introduction: Origins of the Novel
W, 8/26: The Moral and Class Functions of Fiction. The Novel of Manners: Pride and Prejudice

{ Jane Austen's World ;  Elaine's World of Jane Austen ;  Jane Austen ; Jane Austen: LIFE FILE ;  Bibliomania: Four Jane Austen Novels ; Jane Austen stayed here ;  Jane Austen Information Page ;  A Guide to the Jane Austen ; Bill Kemp's Jane Austen Scrapbook ;  See Jane surf: Surf, Jane, surf! ;  Southern Arizona Chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America ; Jane Asten Campfire Chat ; Ostentatious Jane's Page ;  Austen E-texts, Etc. ;  Tribute to Jane Austen ;  Letters of Jane Austen ; Jane Austen Tribute ;  Jane Austen Society of North America ;  Joy Randall's Austen Page ;  Jane Austen Society of Melbourne ;  Pride and Prejudice (English/Chinese) ;  Jane Austen stayed here ;  Elaine's World of Jane Austen ;  Jane Austen's World }

M, 8/31: P&P cont.
W, 9/2: P&P cont.
F, 9/4: The Formation of Victorian Middle Class Ideology:  Evangelicalism, Utilitarianism, and Political Economy

M, 9/7**************************Labor Day************************************************
W, 9/9: Victorian Sexuality and the Invention of the Middle Class Family
F, 9/11: The Victorian Bildungsroman and Victorian Womanhood:  Jane Eyre

{ Brontë Sisters, The ;  Brontë Parsonage Museum, The ;  Bronte Archives, The ;  The Victorian Web ;  Charlotte's Web ;  Charlotte Brontë ;  Charlotte Brontë ;  Bronte Country ;  Brontë Student ;  Landow on Religion, ;  Landow and "The Doctrines of Evangelical Protestantism"  The Victorian Bildungsroman ; Liberalism and Cultural Shock in the Victorian Age ;  John Stuart Mill, On Liberty ; The Gothic, ; From the Dictionary of Sensibility, see:   sympathy ;  The Sublime ; fear/terror/horror ; compassion/pity ; character}

{ On the "Woman Question" see:   A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Full Text) ; Victorian Women Writers Project ;  Victorian Women's History ;  Victorian Gender and Sexuality ;  John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women; Caroline Norton, English Laws for Women [1854] }

M, 9/21: Middle Class Manners and the Problem of Deference: Dickens, Little Dorrit

{ The Dickens Project ;  The Victorian Web ;  Philadelphia Branch of the Dickens Fellowship ;  Riverside Dickens Festival ;  Language Arts Pavilion on Virginia's Public Education Network ;  CHARLES DICKENS ;  Charles Dickens LIVE! ; John Henry Newman, "The Definition of a Gentleman" ; Muscular Christianity ; Heroic Asceticism ;  Female Saviors in Victorian Literature: Amy Dorrit ; Ascetic Love in Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit; Dickens and Social Class }

{ On the Sentimental tradition: Edmund Burke,  "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful ; From the "Dictionary of Sensibility," see:  sympathy ;  compassion/pity ; character

M, 9/28:  Narrative as Deferral: Little Dorrit cont.
W, 9/30: Little Dorrit cont.
F, 10/2:  No Class.

M, 10/5: Little Dorrit cont.
W, 10/7: Inventing Children: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [Bivona, "Alice the Child-Imperialist"]

{ Thomas Cooper Library's 19th Century Children's Literature Exhibition
 LEWIS CARROLL Home Page ;  Fairrosa's Lewis Carroll Page ;  The Victorian Web ;  Jabberwocky Page ;  UTORONTO ;  Tenniel Illustrations for Lewis Carrol's Alice Books ;  Charles Dodgson - photographer ;  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (www.literature.org) ;  Lewis Carroll WWW Links ; Lewis Carrol Exhibition in Warrington ;  Lewis Carroll Illustrated ;  Wolfiewock's Alice in Wonderland Links ; www.expreso.co.cr ;  Glorious Nonsense ;  Lewis Carroll Society ;  Ilen's Jabberwocky Page ;  Lewis Carroll Society of North America ;  Wonderland ;  Jabberwocky Variations ;  Lewis Carroll Home Page ;  Lewis Carroll E-texts ;  Nonsense and Jabberwocky ;  Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll ;  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - illustrated ;  Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There }

M, 10/12:  Alice cont.
W, 10/14: Childhood Narcissism: Through the Looking-Glass
F, 10/16: Through the Looking-Glass cont.

M, 10/19: Through the Looking-Glass cont.

W, 10/21:  Inventing the Community as Imaginary Space: Middlemarch and Victorian High Realism

{  The Victorian Web ;  Works in DataText Library ;  The Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot ; The George Eliot Site; Dickens and George Eliot ;  George Eliot Quotes ;  The George Eliot Fellowship (leaflet) ;  George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies ; The Princeton Searchable Middlemarch}

From Arnold's Culture and Anarchy (1869):  "Hebraism and Hellenism."

M, 10/26: Middlemarch cont.
W, 10/28: Middlemarch cont.
F, 10/30: Middlemarch cont.

M, 11/2:  Middlemarch cont.

W, 11/4: Male Adventure and the Problem of Patriarchy: Master of Ballantrae.  *Paper 2 due.  Topics

{  Robert Louis Stevenson French Page ;  Sur le Chemin Stevenson ;  Stevenson collection in the Thomas Cooper Library ;  Jeanne Ann ;  Jason A. Pierce ;  BBC ;  Robert Louis Stevenson Guide ;  Works in DataText Library ;  UTORONTO}

M, 11/9: Master of Ballantrae cont.
W, 11/11*****************************Veterans' Day****************************************
Th, 11/12:  The Ian Fletcher Lecture by Mary Poovey.  University Club, 7-9.
F, 11/13: Master of Ballantrae cont.

M, 11/16:  Darwinism and Fiction: Jude the Obscure

{  The Thomas Hardy Web Site ;  The Thomas Hardy Society ;  Thomas Hardy Society of North America, The ;  The Thomas Hardy Home Page ;  Hardy in Dorset ;  Thomas Hardy Miscellany ;  Thomas Hardy's World ;  Dickens and Thomas Hardy ;  Thomas Hardy ;  A Small Collection of Poetry ;  Wessex Poems and Other Verses ;  Thomas Hardy Resource Library ;  Bartleby ;  Jude the Obscure ;  Bruce's Thomas Hardy Photo Archive ;  The Victorian Sonnet ;  The Poetry Archives ;  The Pouncy Collection ; The Darwinian Homepage ;  E-texts ;  Charles Darwin Research Station ;   Charles Darwin and the Galapagos ; The Darwin-L Web Server}

M, 11/23: Jude cont.
W, 11/25: Jude cont.
F, 11/27******************************Thanksgiving Holiday********************************

M, 11/30: The Sexual Precocity of Children:  Turn of the Screw

{  Henry James scholar's Guide to Web Sites }

M, 12/7: Turn of the Screwcont.
W, 12/9: Turn of the Screw. **Final Paper due.  Topics.

Dan Bivona's Home Page