English 125B

Book List

Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights; Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness; Dickens, Charles: Bleak House; Eliot, George: The Mill on the Floss; Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South; Hardy, Thomas: Jude the Obscure; Kipling, Rudyard: Kim; Trollope, Anthony: Dr. Wartle's School; Wells, H.G.: The War of the Worlds

Description

What do novels do? How do they 'think'? How do they change the ways in which we perceive fictional and real worlds? Why does the novel come to dominate the literary scene so thoroughly in the Victorian period and into the twentieth century? What did nineteenth-century readers get out of reading prose fiction, whether in serial or volume form, and how do past reading practices connect with the ways we read and consume fiction today?

We will pursue these questions and others through a range of novels by authors including Dickens, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Trollope, Hardy, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad. The class will consist of a mix of lecture, full-class discussion, in-class activities, a paper, and two exams.