ANG2153 British Literature, 1790-1900Fall 2012
Description:
This course is an advanced undergraduate class devoted to British novels published between the years 1816 (year of the publication of Jane Austen’s Emma) and 1895 (year of the publication of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine). Students will be introduced to an array of theoretical approaches to these texts in order to broaden their perspective on the nineteenth century. Students will also discuss the twentieth-century reception of several texts under consideration in the course with three film adaptations. By engaging with the present popular (mis)appropriations of the past, we will see what this can tell us about that period and our reading of it.
Requirements:
- Midterm exam: 30% (12 November 2012)
- Essay: 30% (topics available on 26 November 2012; due 10 December 2012)
- Final exam: 30% (7 January 2013)
- Critical questions: 10%
Bibliography:
- Jane Austen, Emma (1816)
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
- Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1838)
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847)
- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
- R. L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
- H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
- Jacob Tierney’s 2003 Twist
- Roy Ward Baker’s 1971 Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde
- Simon Wells’ 2002 The Time Machine
Secondary Criticism:
- Wendy S. Jones, ‘Emma, Gender, and the Mind-Brain‘, ELH 75.2 (Summer 2008)
- Fred V. Randel, ‘The Political Geography of Horror in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein‘, ELH 70.2 (Summer 2003)
- William T. Lankford, ‘“The Parish Boy’s Progress”: The Evolving Form of Oliver Twist‘, PMLA 93.1 (1978)
- Daniela Garofalo, ‘Impossible Love and Commodity Culture in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights‘, ELH 75.4 (Winter 2008)
- Phyllis Stowell, ‘We’re All Mad Here‘, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 8, 2 (Summer 1983)
- M. Kellen Williams, ‘“Down With the Door, Poole”: Designating Deviance in Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde‘, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 39, 4 (1996)
- Joseph Carroll, ‘Aestheticism, Homoeroticism, and Christian Guilt in The Picture of Dorian Gray‘, Philosophy and Literature 29.2 (2005 )
- Richard Wasson, ‘Myth and the Ex-Nomination of Class in The Time Machine‘, Minnesota Review 15 (Fall 1980)
Schedule:
- 1 October 2012: Introduction
- 8 October 2012: Bank holiday
- 15 October 2012: Austen
- 22 October 2012: Shelley
- 29 October 2012: Dickens
- 5 November 2012: Brontë
- 12 November 2012: Midterm exam
- 19 November 2012: Carroll
- 26 November 2012: Stevenson
- 3 December 2012: Wilde
- 10 December 2012: Class cancelled
- 17 December 2012: Wells
- 7 January 2013: Final exam
This content has been updated on September 7, 2016 at 10 h 37 min.