ENGL 90343 - The British Social Novel in the Nineteenth Century

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

English

Description:

Nineteenth-Century Britain is at the center of a large historical transition from a traditional (feudal and agrarian) social order to a modern social order, marked by the rise of democratic politics and industrial, urban society. This course focuses on 19th-century novels that aimed to represent this transformation at the social level--novels that aimed to paint a large picture of British society. Therefore, although readers often appreciate novels for their detailed focus on individual lives, we will keep alert to how novels represent the complex social conditions within which such lives must be lived. Our thematic focus will allow us explore some of the largest controversies in scholarship of recent years. We will see how scholars have staked out several different, even antithetical ways of understanding how literary works reflect and inform social life in this period. Foucauldianism and New Historicism, for example, derive importantly from Marxism and emphasize how literary works serve the ideological agenda of liberal modernity and capitalism. In that view, the novel genre tends to celebrate individualism and to cultivate reformist rather than revolutionary thinking. But another set of scholarly arguments, deriving from several different political theories, has challenged the Marxian criticisms by seeking to develop more nuanced and sometimes redemptive interpretations of liberal culture and political modernity. This course will put students in a position to engage our primary texts and current scholarly debates in a strong, informed fashion. The central goal is the creation of an article-length term paper with strong prospects of eventual publication.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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