Lahore University of Management Sciences

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1 ENGL 2354 The Victorian Novel: Charles Dickens to Thomas Hardy Fall Semester ( ) Instructor Dr. Saeed Ghazi Room No. 129 HSS Office Hours Friday 5:00 8:00 pm Telephone 8045 Secretary/TA 8114 TA Office TBA Hours Course URL (if any) Course Basics Credit Hours 4 Lecture(s) Nbr of Lec(s) Per Week Recitation/Lab (per Nbr of Lec(s) week) Per Week Tutorial (per week) Nbr of Lec(s) Per Week 2 Duration 1 Hour 50 Minutes -- Duration -- TBA Duration TBA Course Distribution Core Elective Open for Student Category Close for Student Category No Yes (English majors / English minors) All None COURSE DESCRIPTION Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. Terence The Novel as an art form blossomed in the Nineteenth Century. France produced Stendhal, Honore de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert, Herman Melville, Henry James, and Mark Twain emerged from the United States, and Russia gave the world Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. In England, the Victorian Age is seen as the great age of the novel. The period named after Queen Victoria ( ), the longest reigning monarch in British history, produced a staggering number of novels, with estimates ranging from 40,000 to 60,000. Victorian novelists like Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy have come to enjoy international acclaim. They explored an array of subjects, themes, and ideas ranging from the social

2 and political to the intensely personal, creating a dazzling array of male and female characters, many of whom are embedded in the collective unconscious of a readership unconfined by national boundaries. This course will focus on five canonical masterpieces, Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Bronte, Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens, Middlemarch (1872) by George Eliot, and Tess of the D Urbervilles (1891) by Thomas Hardy. The contexts in which they emerged social, political, cultural, and ideological, will be systematically elaborated. The impact and significance of colonialism and the rise and expansion of empire on the Victorian novel will receive particularly close scrutiny. Many Victorian novels are celebrated for their portrayal of female protagonists who give expression to their rich inner lives, experiences, and passions, often in a constricting and confining social environment. The novels explore a range of themes including identity and the construction of a self, (male and female), memory and displacement, the consequences of the loss of faith, the relationship of materialism and the spirit, and gentility and morality. In apprehending these texts, a number of critical approaches will be brought to bear including the textual (Russian Formalism, Narratology, Poststructuralism and deconstruction), contextual (Cultural Materialism and New Historicism, Generic, Psychological and Psychoanalytic), and ideological (Feminist, Marxist). Prominent among the issues that will receive consideration are the following: the Victorian novel and the construction of national identity, the factors responsible for the emergence and popularity of the novel, the distinctive features of early, high and late Victorianism, what if anything binds these five diverse novelists and brings them under one roof, the emergence of the realist novel and the various flavors of realism (realism of presentation, realism of content, social realism, moral realism, psychological realism, fantastic realism, romantic realism, dirty realism, absolute realism), the male and female bildungsroman, narrative technique, and the structure of the novels. COURSE PREREQUISITE(S) There are no pre-requisites for this course. COURSE OBJECTIVES A) B) To provide students with an overview and a critical understanding of Victorian Fiction. Students will acquaint themselves with the distinctive characteristics of Victorian Fiction and obtain an insight into the social, political, cultural, and philosophical developments of this period. To acquaint students with the narrative techniques, structural and stylistic features, and thematic concerns as manifested in five exemplary novels by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy.

3 C) Lahore University of Management Sciences To acquaint students with the distinguishing features of the realist tradition in Fiction and the various flavors of realism. Learning Outcomes A) B) C) Students will emerge from this course with a heightened understanding of the distinctive contributions of Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy in shaping and defining the sensibility of the Victorian age. Students should emerge from this course with the critical and analytical tools necessary to critique the five novels of the principal canonical writers of the Victorian Age. Students will manifest an understanding of the ways in which labels and periods are constructs which can enlarge as well as impede understanding. Students will demonstrate an understanding of why and how literary artists reflect, interrogate, and construct the spirit of the age Grading Breakup and Policy 1. Response Papers/Tests: 10% 2. Mid Term Examination: 25% 3. Critical Essay: 30% 4. Final Examination: 35% Examination Detail Midterm Exam Yes Combine Separate: N/A Duration: 100 Minutes Preferred Date: First Session of the week (Monday/Tuesday) Exam Specifications: Closed Book/Closed Notes Final Exam Yes Combine Separate: N/A Duration: 100 Minutes Exam Specifications: Closed Book/Closed Notes

4 COURSE OVERVIEW Lecture Author/ Topic Primary Text Secondary Text /s 1. Introduction to the Course 2. Introduction to the Victorian Age The Rise of the Novel; Charlotte Bronte ( ) Jane Thomas, Victorian Literature: Introduction: the construction of Victorianism (1994) From Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957); Jane Eyre (1857) Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre ; The Female Bildungsroman Charlotte Bronte Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre Jane Eyre From Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination (2000): Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre Adrienne Rich, Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman

5 Emily Bronte ( ) Wuthering Heights (1847) Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights 10. Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights 11. Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights From Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination (2000): Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights Martha Nussbaum, Wuthering Heights: the Romantic Assent (1996): Charles Dickens ( ) Great Expectations (1861) The social novel ; the male bildungsroman

6 Charles Dickens No Class Mid Term Exam ---- Charles Dickens Great Expectations Great Expectations Charles Dickens Great Expectations Peter Brooks, Repetition, Repression, and Return: The Plotting of Great Expectations (1984) : Charles Dickens Great Expectations Michael Peled Ginsburg, Dickens and the Uncanny: Repression and Displacement in Great Expectations (1984): George Eliot ( ) Middlemarch (1872)

7 20. George Eliot Middlemarch 21. George Eliot Middlemarch 22. George Eliot Middlemarch 23. George Eliot Middlemarch George Eliot Middlemarch Lee R. Edwards, Women, 24. Energy and Middlemarch Massachusetts Review 13 (1972): Thomas Hardy ( ) Tess of the D Urbervilles Thomas Hardy Tess of the D Urbervilles Thomas Hardy Tess of the D Urbervilles Penny Boumelha, Tess of the d Urbervilles: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form (1982): Thomas Hardy Tess of the D Urbervilles Kaja Silverman, History, Figuration and Female Subjectivity in Tess of the

8 Textbook(s)/Supplementary Readings Lahore University of Management Sciences d Urbervilles (1984):