This is a course description for informational purposes only.  When this course is next offered in fall 2006, a full syllabus will be available via Blackboard to students registered in the course. 

 

Victorian Novels of Vocation (ENG 3108/5108)

 

course description:

This course examines the importance of vocation—a call to meaningful work in the world, which sometimes takes the form of a particular profession—in four classic Victorian novels.  We will read brief biographical selections to help us appreciate the ways in which the novelists adapt their own experience of seeking, and finding, a literary vocation; we will also consider some criticism from the nineteenth century to the present day.  While our primary focus will be the novelists’ treatment of vocation, we will pay close attention to other key themes of the novels, as well as to techniques of narration, characterization, and description, and how they change and develop over the course of the Victorian period.  This course counts towards the English major as a genre course.

Readings:

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).  

 

Charles Dickens,  David Copperfield (1849-50).  

George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-72).

 

Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1895). 

course requirements:

• active participation in discussion

• leading one discussion

• for undergraduates: one short paper (5-6 pages; option to revise) and one long paper (8-10 pages)

• for graduate students: one long paper (20 pages) that incorporates secondary sources and criticism.

course objectives:

 

• to explore the concept of vocation, as articulated by four prominent Victorian novelists
• to acquaint you thoroughly with the four novels we will read, as well as with biographical and historical context
• to introduce you to many of the principal questions critics and readers have asked regarding these novels since their publication
• to deepen your understanding of the concerns exhibited and techniques deployed by Victorian writers
• to develop your skills as critical readers—particularly close reading, making connections within a literary work, and generating thought-provoking questions—through active reading and guided class preparation
• to develop your skills at presenting your questions and ideas verbally, and at responding to those of others, through seminar-style class discussions, one of which you will lead
• to develop your skills as critical writers about literature, through analytical paper assignments, including an opportunity for revision

 

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