ENGL W3962 - The Novel of Manners

Institution:

Columbia University in the City of New York

Subject:

Description:

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. (Seminar). A study of the novelistic genre, in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain and the US, that centers on the vexed relation between individual consciousness and social behavior, particularly as revealed by the small customary norms known as "manners." How manners express, encode, inhibit, or produce things like social conflict, ethics, and desire will be our theme. We will also give special attention to manners as a crucial cultural battleground between aristocratic status and bourgeois striving: not just the details of eating, dress, gesture, and speech, in other words, but also how those details tell the story of modern subjectivity. Novels to be selected from among Austen, Gaskell, Trollope, Meredith, James, Wharton, Waugh, Pym, Hollinghurst; supplementary reading from Trilling, Geertz, Douglas, Goffman, Elias, Bourdieu, and others; likely attention to at least one cinematic example, such as Renoir's La règle du jeu. Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Dames (nd122@columbia.edu) by noon on Wednesday, April 11th, with the subject heading, "Novel of Manners seminar." In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, relevant courses taken, and along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course.

Credits:

4.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.columbia.edu

Phone Number:

(212) 854-1754

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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