Novel Analysis

Course content

The years from the Great Exhibition (1851) to the Second Reform Bill (1867) were a period of enormous vitality in the English novel. Major works by Dickens, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Trollope, George Eliot, Gaskell, and others capitalized on the burgeoning of serial publication and circulating libraries; on unprecedented growth of consumer capitalism at home and imperial dominance abroad; on worshipful audiences ranging from distinguished literary critics, to eminent leaders of society and politics, to vast numbers of middle and lower class readers. The result was a novel of confident power and narrative scope. By focusing on this period, we are able to survey many of the major authors of Victorian fiction while attending closely to a specific set of historical developments, class relations, and gender issues. The aim of the course is to instruct the students about the characteristics of novel as a literary genre and to show the classroom techniques for teaching the realist novel and to introduce them to the Victorian novel by close study of major texts from this period.