Literary Studies (LTST) 612

Overview

This course gives students the opportunity to study the English novel in “the long nineteenth century” (1789–1914), when the genre became the most popular literary form in a period of rapid expansion in the English reading public amid profound social and economic transformations under British capital and empire. The course adopts the discourse of “the Gothic” as an interpretive framework for closely reading and historically contextualizing the genre of the novel and related prose narratives. The Gothic is itself not a genre but a mode, one that influences and is adapted by a diverse range of authors, across a diverse range of literary forms. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), for example, adapted the Gothic to modern contexts, helping to build the genre of “scientific romance” that in turn engendered today’s science fiction. The Gothic thus becomes an interpretive prism that refracts other important modes and subgenres of the nineteenth-century English novel, including parody (for example, Lewis), realism (for example, Austen), and blurring fiction’s boundaries with nonfiction, sensation, and confessional writing (for example, De Quincey).

Gothic fictions and those that adapt the Gothic also represent important cultural mediations of the social, political, and economic issues and transformations that characterized Britain during the rise of industrial capital and the global expansion of England’s empire: the transformation of literary production (for example, serialization, copyright change, circulating library distribution); the advent of public education, industrialization, and class conflict; imperial expansion; feminism (for example, controversies over what women read); and developments in science and technology (for example, new medicines).

Rather than taking an exhaustive survey of the period’s novels and related forms, this course provides intensive reading in a small number of them, complemented by reading in selected criticism on these texts. This course thus teaches both literary history and how that history is constructed through criticism. This course focuses as much on what critics and scholars have made of the assigned texts as on the texts themselves. We will look at how different critical methods operate: their premises, their arguments, their applications—in sum, the strength (or weakness) of their readings. This course assumes an interest in reading criticism and exploring various literary theories; it also assumes that students have become acquainted with theory via MAIS 601 and/or LTST 605, or an equivalent course. This is not a theory course, but theory informs the criticism that we will be reading and discussing.

These “Gothic transformations,” read together with commentary and research on them, will furnish students with vital context, repertoire, and analytic skills for understanding a key period in the development of the English novel (and related genres such as creative nonfiction); for practicing literary criticism; and for relating the Gothic’s historical emergence to its continuing popularity.

Outline

Learning outcomes

In this course, students are expected to develop and practice the following critical capacities:

• Understand the major social, historical, political, cultural, and theoretical contexts informing literary production in the long nineteenth century
• Practice close reading (to develop critical thinking, active reading, and interpretive skills), scholarly research (to develop information literacy), and academic writing (to develop argument and communication skills)
• Gain knowledge of historical processes, interrelations, and transformations of literary production, distribution, and reception
• Recognize and distinguish among major genres and modes of literature that emerged in the long nineteenth century
• Attain working knowledge of various kinds of literary theory (for example, new historicism, Marxist criticism, feminist and gender theory, poststructuralism) and be able to critically assess the application of these theories in literary criticism and scholarship
• Read and critically assess—in a word, critique—scholarly arguments in literary criticism in order to appreciate and master the substance, structure, and style of academic writing

Evaluation

To receive credit for this course, students must attend a meeting with their course professor and submit a close reading of an assigned text, a critique of a scholarly article, a research essay proposal, and a research essay. Students must achieve an overall grade of at least C– (60 percent) for the course. See the Master of Arts—Interdisciplinary Studies grading system. Please note that it is students' responsibility to maintain their program status. Any student who receives a grade of "F" in one course, or a grade of "C" in more than one course, may be required to withdraw from the program.

Materials

Physical course materials

The following course materials are included in a course package that will be shipped to your home prior to your course’s start date:

Lewis, Matthew Gregory. The Monk. 1796. Edited by D. L. MacDonald and Kathleen Scherf, Broadview Press, 2003.

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. 1818. Edited by Claire Grogan, 2nd ed., Broadview Press, 2002.

De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. 1821. Edited by Joel Faflak, Broadview Press, 2009.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. 1886. Edited by Martin A. Danahay, 3rd ed., Broadview Press, 2015.

All other assigned readings are available online.

Important links

• Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Focus Areas
• Courses
• Fees and Funding