ENGL 247

Spring 2014 All Classes

All Classes

The British Novel

Credit: 3 hours.

A study of some of the more noteworthy and influential writers of the last two hundred and fifty years. The course traces the development of the novel as a genre that both celebrated and critiqued Britain and British nationalism. Examines how the novel has been important culturally over time.

Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.

This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Fall 2022 for:

Humanities – Lit & Arts

Cultural Studies - Western

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ENGL 247 class schedule data for spring 2014
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	32062	Lecture-Discussion	P	11:00AM -12:15PM	TR	English Building	Baron, I	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/14-05/07/14 Degree Notes: Literature and the Arts, and Western Compartv Cult course. Section Info: The novel made its debut in Britain over a hundred years after it first appeared on the continent. But the little nation of Great Britain on the outskirts of Europe produced some of the most noteworthy and influential writers of the last two hundred and fifty years. In this course, we'll trace the development of the novel as a genre that both celebrated and critiqued British nationalism. We?ll examine how the novel served as a vehicle to record and redefine the boundaries of a social order predicated on preserving noble bloodlines into a culture that produced the Industrial Revolution, The Beatles and the Welfare State. We?ll start out with a look at the estate house as the defining icon of British patriarchy and class hierarchy in the Regency period. We?ll discuss how the rise of the middle class was fomented through the spirit of British nationalism that evolved during the Napoleonic Wars and how British naval dominance catapulted this island-nation into creating a vast colonialist empire that expanded across the entire globe. Then we?ll explore the rise of industrialization in the midlands, focusing on how the paradigm of factory labor and ownership reconfigured British social and economic policies for decades to come. Next we?ll examine how fiction functioned as a crucible for mandating radical reform movements in the UK such as feminism, socialism and environmentalism when we approach the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And finally, as we move into the modern and postmodern periods, we?ll see how the two global wars served as the catalysts to dismantle the conservative values inherent in British society and whether the future of the UK resides in a broader social and racial demographic or in a distopic future ruled by the WASP elite. Requirements for the class include three short papers and a final exam. Regular class attendance and participation are expected. Texts and films may include: Persuasion, Jane Eyre, Tess of the D?Urbervilles, Howards End, Sherlock Holmes, Atonement, The King?s Speech, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, The Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Philosopher?s Stone, Skyfall.
	39047	Lecture-Discussion	S	2:00PM -3:15PM	TR	English Building	Nazar, H	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/14-05/07/14 Degree Notes: Literature and the Arts, and Western Compartv Cult course. Section Info: This course traces the development of the British novel from its beginnings in the eighteenth century to the present day. The six novels we will discuss include some of the most influential literary works of all times, which continue to compel and fascinate readers, as is evidenced by their seemingly endless incarnations in films, BBC miniseries, sequels, and (even) zombie offshoots. They include realistic renderings of the Cinderella story, archetypal narratives about every man being an island unto himself, modernist fantasies about changing gender and time at will, and postmodernist satires about our fallen human condition. The novel, Ian Watt argued in his classic study, The Rise of the Novel, is a genre that, by definition, dedicates itself to representing individuals, often at odds with their societies. It came onto the literary scene fairly late in the day because only in modernity do individuals (rather than their communities or God) really matter as bearers of agency or as centers of consciousness, desire, and will. We will ask whether Watt?s thesis really holds, as well as questions like the following: How do considerations of gender, class, race, and nationality inform various novelists? understandings of who counts as an individual? In what kinds of societies, if any, do our fictional protagonists seek membership? Do these exclude anyone, and if so, why? We will pay special attention to the treatment of gender in the works we read since women acquired a new importance in the novel, as both shapers and subjects of the new genre. We will consider how fiction represents the relationship between the sexes and how it imagines female agency. Works to be covered include Daniel Defoe?s Robinson Crusoe (1719), Jane Austen?s Pride and Prejudice (1813), George Eliot?s The Mill on the Floss (1860), Charles Dickens? Great Expectations (1861), Virginia Woolf?s Orlando (1928), and Hanif Kureishi?s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990).