The Nineteenth-Century Novel

Catalog description

At the start of the nineteenth century, the novel as a genre was a new and often derided form of literature. By the end of the century, however, it had transformed into arguably the most enduring and influential aesthetic form of the modern era. Yet just what is “the nineteenth century novel,” and why did it attract readers ranging from the working classes to Queen Victoria herself? What cultural and political factors drove its emergence as a genre, and how did the novel shape modern understandings of social issues ranging from marriage, childhood, race, and gender to labor, urban life, empire, and medicine? Through a survey of key authors including Jane Austen, the Brontës, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, and Virginia Woolf—among others—this course introduces students to the wide array of novelistic forms invented by nineteenth century writers, and to the work of these writers to build the novel into a powerful agent of social and political change. Prereq: QEN 101. Credit: 4.0. (Offered every even fall.)