Literature 343 - Social Criticism in the Victorian Novel

Institution:

Bard College

Subject:

Description:

Victorian Studies In this seminar, students examine four realist novels dedicated to forcing upon the consciousness of Victorian middle-class readers certain consequences of their naively triumphal account of a uniquely British "world order." Exemplarytrials in über-realism, these "total novels?spired to embody the social organism as a whole. From W. M. Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend to George Eliot's Middlemarch and Anthony Trollope' s TheWay We Live Now, students consider how attempts to anatomize and criticize contemporary manners, morals, society, and politics led directly to experimentation in the form of sprawling multiplot narratives. Students also examine how British cultural formation in this period borrowed from the literary imagination of 19th-century novels.

Credits:

4.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.bard.edu

Phone Number:

(845) 758-6822

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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