Friday, April 23, 2004
Attn: English Dorks
I'm kind of torn between which classes I should take for the fall semester, so hey, I thought I'd ask for other opinions. Double-posting to both the LJ and the blog for this one, since I know a lot of you are over there anyway.
At the moment I am going through the rather poor selection of English classes for the fall semester. I require 3 more English classes for my degree, from three separate areas: Area I -- Single or Dual Author; Area III -- Genre or Theme; and Area V -- Senior Seminar.
Area I is always a choice between Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton, and I'm holding off on the senior seminar till the spring, because the current selection sucks. But, for Genre and Theme, I have this class as an option:
E327: The English Novel in the 18th Century
The generic label “novel” did not come into general use until the 1780s. Yet long before then writers and readers acknowledged that a “new species of writing” was rapidly transforming the literary scene (even if they couldn’t agree on what to call it). “Novel” is ultimately an apt name for a genre that experimented broadly (and, broadly, every publication was an experiment during these formative years) with both narrative content and printed self-presentation. This class explores the emergence of the British novel over the course of “the long eighteenth century,” from 1688 to 1816. Although this class includes study of a pivotal work by Defoe and consideration of the famous Fielding and Richardson rivalry, it dedicates the bulk of its attention to important fictions by early women writers. It is not coincidental that the rise of the novel coincides with the rise of the professional woman writer (and a sharp increase in female literacy); the novel’s fate would be in large part determined by the female pen. Lectures will provide a historical and visual context for these texts’ overlapping preoccupations with issues as varied as art, colonialism, landscape, economics, theatre, urbanization, and print culture.
Texts
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (Norton)
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Norton)
Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess (Broadview Press)
Samuel Richardson, Pamela (OUP)
Charlotte Lennox, Female Quixote (OUP)
Frances Burney, Evelina (OUP or Norton)
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (Norton)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (OUP)
I'm thinking of taking it, but I'd like opinions on whether or not I'd actually like it -- so naturally, I must ask my neighborhood 18th Century Fangirls. So, what say you, Erica and Em? Does it look like a good class, just from this impression? (I don't know anyone who's taken it or the prof., so I don't really have classmates' opinions.)
My other options for Area III include:
E356: The European Novel (which does look interesting indeed; but the downside is that it requires research assignments, and I don't want to do that. I just want to write essays about themes and diction and foreshadowing and stuff.)
“European novel”: is the formula a redundancy, or the description of but one historical, continental subset of a modern genre of world literature? This course will examine both the “roots” of the novel in European literary history and the changing parameters of “Europe” over the last several centuries. Colonialism, social upheaval and political revolution, the formation of modern states in the 19th century, world wars, and the controversial consolidation of the European Union in the last decades of the 20th century will provide the background and premises for our readings of a selection of European novels, both classical and contemporary.
Texts:
Victor Hugo, Notre Dame of Paris
Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days (flashbacks to high school)
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (somewhere on my list)
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf
E328: The English Novel in the 19th Century (which sounds all right, I suppose. It has some of those books that I Really Should Get Round to Reading, and all. On the other hand... Wuthering Heights? Puke, puke, puke. And haven't I heard bad things from some of you about Middlemarch?)
This course studies the Victorian novel and concentrates on works by most of the major figures in the period: the Brontës, Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. We begin by looking at the cultural context in which the novels were written and by reading brief selections from non-fictional writers. In discussions of the novelists, we concentrate on why the novel became so popular as a form in the Victorian period; how the novelists tried to deal with questions of social identity, the emergence of the modern mind, and the predicaments of religious uncertainty. We also try to see how novelists use their art to discover “reality” and, especially, how they evoke the participation of the reader in such discovery.
There is a lot of reading in the course, all of it rich, engaging, and demanding. Students need to keep up with the reading since there is no room in the course for backtracking. It’s helpful to have at least a minimum sense of the basic techniques of fiction: e.g., the difference between first and third person narration. Generally, I don’t expect a lot of background.
Texts
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (barf)
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
and, finally:
E340: The American Novel Before 1920 (with Dr. Kevorkian, who I love to death and who thinks I am the most wonderful student EVAR; at the moment, I'm leaning in this direction. The downside is that I've read a couple of these before; but the upside is we'd be comparing them to different novels, as opposed to Emerson and Thoreau as we did in the American Renaissance class.)
In our readings of earlier American novels, we will pay attention to religion as a thematic element as well as a structuring principle. For example, while reading early instances of the sentimental, the gothic, and the picaresque, we will conduct a speculative inquiry into how these novelistic genres might express some of the tendencies of conversion morphologies, including Puritan-approved and antinomian varieties. The tradition of the captivity narrative, which often overlaps with conversion narrative, will also play a part in our account. Although the question of religion as such will not command our entire focus, we will attempt to sustain a consistent concern with the interplay between narrative, genre, and conversion.
Texts
Foster, The Coquette
Brown, Wieland
Tyler, The Algerine Captive
Melville, Typee
Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (already read it... this would be the third time)
Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (barf, again)
James, The American
Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware
So, any thoughts?
| 12:50 PM |
Comments
Who am I? I'm a twenty-two-
