ENGL344 Nineteenth-Century Fiction

This course will focus on six brilliant English-language novels published in the second half of the nineteenth century and drawn from around the world: England, Australia, India, South Africa, and the United States. The novels range from the highly canonical, like Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and George Eliot's Middlemarch, to the lesser known but extraordinary, like Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay's short but powerful Rajmohan's Wife and Frances Harper's Iola Leroy. Each raises questions about the place of women in a quickly changing society, along with accompanying concerns regarding race, colonial power, and the function of the novel itself. Broader topics to be addressed include realism, romance, nationalism, race and racial identity, feminism, sexuality, emigration, and empire.

Workload will include roughly 100 pages of reading for each class (about 200 pages per week); assignments include three short essays, a brief in-class presentation, and a final exam.  

Section(s):
0101 -  Jason Rudy