What's
New

In preparing for the final, you might find it helpful to look at the sample responses posted for the novels we have read this quarter. Click here or click on "Student Work" from any page. 

Schedule Changes:

• The term paper has been cancelled.

• Dracula is no longer assigned for the ninth week. Instead, please read Dracula for the final examination.

• Because there is no Dracula response assignment, you now need to complete five responses (not six) for the quarter. 

Description

The novel has been a vibrant form in Britain since the end of the seventeenth century, though it was not until well into the nineteenth century that this immensely popular form was considered “serious” by literary critics. In this course we will use this arbitrary divide between popular and serious to examine how novelists both responded to the public’s taste for the familiar and tested the public’s acceptance of novelty. In the process we’ll read some ripping good yarns.

Eighteenth and nineteenth-century novels are exciting, thought-provoking, playful and moving; they are also exceptionally and in the case of Middlemarch unbelievably LONG.

Be forewarned: you should enroll only if you are prepared to keep up with the reading (an average of 250 pages per week) and with two-page response papers due nearly every other week. 

Because this is a lecture-discussion class rather than a formal lecture course, active and informed contribution to class discussion is expected from all students.

Reading List

The following texts are required for this class:

Austen, Jane. Emma. New York : Oxford. (0192802372)

Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave. New York : Penguin (0-14-043988-9) (optional)

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. New York: Penguin (rev. ed. 2003) (0-14-143955-6)

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. New York : Oxford (new ed 1998) (0192833820)

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York : Penguin (rev ed 2003) (0-14-143956-4)

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Hound of the Baskervilles. New York : Penguin (new ed 2001) (0-14-043786-X)

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. New York : Penguin. (0-14-143954-8)

Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews. New York : Penguin. (0-14-043386-4)

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York : Penguin. (0-14-043911-0)

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York : Penguin. (0-14-043406-2)

Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto. New York : Penguin. (0-14-043767-3)