19th-Century Novel

Catalog description

During the nineteenth century the novel became the dominant literary form of its day, supplanting poetry and drama on both sides of the Atlantic. In this introduction to the novelists of the period, we will read the writers who secured the novel's cultural respectability and economic prominence. Likely authors will include Austen, the Brontes, Collins, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Thackeray, Scott, and Stowe. The course will explore the themes, techniques, and styles of the nineteeth-century novel. It will focus not only on the large structural and thematic patterns and problems within each novel but also on the act of reading as a historically specific cultural ritual in itself. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.