Thursdays, 2-4:50 pm
Williams 114
This course uses the 19th-century novel as a lens through which to examine classic and new theories of the genre.
We’ll start with a quick survey of Watt, Lukacs, Armstrong, and McKeon and then move to some of the interesting and provocative ways that scholars have been theorizing the novel, especially the 19th-century novel, over the past few years. We’ll conclude by considering “why the novel,” when other forms of media also offer the pleasures and challenges of narrative. Students should be familiar with Charles Dickens, Bleak House, and George Eliot, Middlemarch. The course should satisfy 1660-1900, “theory,” and “genre: novel.”
