ENG324Y -- Fiction, 1832 - 1900
May 2001 - August 2001
Instructor: Ann-Barbara Graff
Office: TBA
Office Hours: TR 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. or by appointment
Class Meeting Times: TR 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
George Hayter, Queen Victoria (1863)
National Portrait Gallery
| First Essay Topics | Second Essay Topics |
Brief Description of Course: This intensive course provides an introduction to the Victorian novel. We will focus our attention on some of the preeminent novelists of the period, attending to issues of style and form as well as to how the novel participates in Victorian debates about poverty, sexuality, morality, change, justice, nation-building, and imperialism. We will study how the Victorian novel helped an emergent industrial society imagine itself into being.
Our progress through the period will be roughly chronological. We will
study Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (Oxford), Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (Penguin), Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton (Broadview), Anthony
Trollope's Barchester Towers (Oxford), Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady
Audley's Secret (Oxford), Charles Dickens's Great Expectations
(Broadview), Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (Broadview), George Eliot's
Middlemarch (Penguin), Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(Broadview), George Gissing's The Odd Women (Broadview), and--time
permitting--Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (Braodview). We will read
William Makepeace Thackerary's Vanity Fair (Oxford) in instalments. In
order to situate these works in their social, political and aesthetic
contexts, we will supplement our literary readings with a variety of
non-fictional writings from the Victorian period, ranging from public
health reports to medical case studies, to contemporary essays, political
speeches and reviews.
All texts are available at the St. George Campus Bookstore. If you have
a copy of the text already (or if you find a cheap copy in a used
bookstore), don't worry about the edition. The editions I have selected
are usually the most readily accessible and/or the most helpful (with
editorial appendices). In the case of most of these texts, you will be reading them in other courses in later years, so it is advisable to buy a copy that will hold up under the stress. To help defray the cost of the books (and because of the quality of the editions), I have ordered a number of books from Broadview Press. Broadview offers a promotion whereby you will be charged for 3 books when you purchase 4. I have asked
that the four most expensive texts (Mary Barton, The Moonstone, Jude the
Obscure, and The Odd Women) be shrinkwrapped for this purpose.
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (Oxford)
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (Oxford)
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (Penguin)
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (Broadview)
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone(Broadview)
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford)
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (Broadview)
Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (Oxford)
George Eliot, Middlemarch (Penguin)
Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Broadview)
George Gissing, The Odd Women (Broadview)
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (Broadview)
Films will be recommended or screened when available.
M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (Holt)
The University of Toronto's Glossary of Literary Terms Prof. Greig Henderson
Two tests; two essays; two short responses; participation
Go to "Some Thoughts" page.
Resources
Useful Pointers to e-Texts
English Department Web Page
Last Updated by Ann-Barbara Graff -- February 2001
graff@dgp.utoronto.ca