EN245 The English Nineteenth-Century Novel
2011/12
Course convenor: Dr Gill Frith, Room H510
Tutors:
Dr Gill Frith; G.M.Frith@warwick.ac.uk
Dr Charlotte Mathieson; C.E.Mathieson@warwick.ac.uk
This is a Pathway Approved Option for the English Pathway and one of the Distributional Requirement options for the Theory, World and North American Pathways in 2012/13.
Objectives and Outline Syllabus: This module aims to explore the form of the novel and the ways in which it develops in the particular context of nineteenth-century Britain, responding to rapid social change - and the possibility of revolution - and the correspondingly shifting understandings of class, gender, sexuality, nation and culture. We shall focus particularly on the theorisation and representation of space, place and embodiment: the country and the city, the house and its objects, and how the body inhabits space. This focus will enable new readings of what may seem to be familiar texts. Novelists studied will include Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Henry James and Oscar Wilde, and we shall also be looking at some non-fictional writing on politics and aesthetics. The subject is a rich one and the writing embraces the sensational and the satirical as well as fictions of social realism.
Teaching times:
There are no lectures for this module. 1.5 hour seminars are at the following times:
Dr Gill Frith: Thursday, 9.30-11am; Thursday 11.30-1pm (H502)
Dr Charlotte Mathieson: Wednesday 9.30-11am, 11.30-1pm (H543); Friday 10.30-12pm (H502)
Method of assessment:Two x 5,000-word essays or one essay of 5,000 words plus a 2 hour examination.
Novels for 2011/12 (full syllabus here)
Term 1
Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent (1800)
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (1849)
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1854-5)
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891)
Term 2
Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868)
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876)
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
THomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1895)
Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton (1897)
SUMMER READING
The reading load for this module is comparatively heavy, as many of the novels, while very rewarding, are also very long! You will find the module much more manageable (and enjoyable) if you read the set texts listed above during the summer vacation.
If you would like to undertake some secondary reading, a useful starting-point would be Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (1973)
Gill Frith
April 2011
