English 190

Research Seminar: Sixty Years Since: The Historical Novel

Other Readings and Media

Course readings include A Tale of Two Cities, Vanity Fair, Adam Bede, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Atonement. Other readings will be made available electronically.  

Description

"By fixing, then, the date of my story Sixty Years before the present 1st November, 1805, I would have my readers understand, that they will meet in the following pages neither a romance of chivalry nor a tale of modern manners; that my hero will neither have iron on his shoulders, as of yore, nor on the heels of his boots, as is the present fashion of Bond Street; and that my damsels will neither be clothed 'in purple and in pall,' like the Lady Alice of an old ballad, nor reduced to the primitive nakedness of a modern fashionable at a rout. From this my choice of an era the understanding critic may farther presage that the object of my tale is more a description of men than manners."                                            —Walter Scott, Waverley (1814)

"Sixty Years Since" takes up Waverley's audacious claim that sixty years is the ideal distance for fictional representations of history. Grounded in theories of the novel in relation to history, we'll ask how (and at what distance) the genre might represent history, chronicle social change, and portray historical places and persons. We'll track questions about the relationship between history and fiction by analyzing novels written sixty years since by Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy, concluding with Ian McEwan's neo-Victorian novel, Atonement. Informed by theoretical and critical readings drawn from Walter Scott, M.M. Bakhtin, Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, and others, we'll ask how each novel structures historical distance, imagines the powers and purposes of fiction, and explores the relationship between fiction and history. At course's end, we'll turn to the contemporary moment to think about the strategies of historical representation in a recently concluded fiction set sixty years since: "Mad Men."

In addition to regular class meetings, we will take two required (and one recommended) trips to area collections and museums. Written assignments include one short essay, one research paper, and three blog posts responding to theoretical readings and class trips. By the end of the course, you will have thorough grounding both in the theory of the novel and the contours of a particular genre. Through rigorous in-class discussion and varied writing assignments you will, moreover, develop as literary critics, honing close-reading, argumentative, and research skils.

Please read the paragraph about English 190 on page 2 of the instructions area of this Announcement of Classes for more details about enrolling in or wait-listing for this course.

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