GNCS 255 - Nineteenth-Century British Novels

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Readings vary but include novels by Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy.

Topic for 2023/24b: Nineteenth-Century British Novels. (Same as ENGL 255) Writing in 1831, the philosopher John Stuart Mill declared the nineteenth century “an age of transition.” Humankind, he argues, “have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones.” In this class, we explore how British writers turned to the novel—a literary form synonymous with newness—in their quest to find order in the apparent chaos of this century of transition. From Queen Victoria’s ascent to the throne in 1837 to the anxiety and experimentation of the fin-de-siecle, we witness the transformations of the novel in response to large-scale historical processes like imperialism, industrialization, urbanization, and the reorganization of domestic life. And, just as history shaped the novel, so too did the novel shape history, writing the story of the world we live in today.

Following Mill’s suggestion, the institutions of the novel—its genres; conventions of plot, character, and style; methods of publication; and protocols for reading—is our guide. Over the course of the semester, we map the literary field of nineteenth- century Britain, starting with what is often seen as its signature achievement: the realist novel. In major works by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and George Eliot, we explore both the conventions of realism and its ideological functions—asking whose reality is actually being represented, and why. But we also explore those stranger and more speculative works—the gothic romances of the Brontës and Robert Louis Stevenson, the detective novels of Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle, the science fiction of H.G. Wells—that strain against the limitations of the real, constructing alternative worlds for readers to inhabit. The course concludes with a consideration of the nineteenth-century novel’s lingering presence in contemporary culture, especially in serial forms like television, podcasts, and smartphone fiction. Mark Taylor.

This course satisfies the pre-1900 requirement for the English major.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS