English
4/805B:Romantic and Early Victorian Novels
English
4/805B:
Romantic and Early Victorian
Novels
Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews; 472-1806
ofc: 11-12 and 2-3 TR
and by appointment
sbehrendt1@unl.edu
Email Stephen C. Behrendt
Spring 2006
A Circulating Library, c. 1813
The Corvey Novels Course Project
See the links at the bottom of this page for additional information.
Overview
Part of your work in this course involves exploring the range of fiction that was published and widely read during the Romantic and early Victorian periods, c. 1780-1850. Most of you have heard of traditional, canonical novelists like William Godwin, Mary Robinson, Ann Radcliffe, James Hogg, Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, and the Brontë sisters, some of whose works you may already have read. You may also know about novelists like Amelia Opie, Charlotte Smith, Charlotte Dacre, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Hays, Charles Maturin, Matthew Lewis, Benjamin Disraeli, and Charles Ainsworth, even if you have not previously read any of their novels. But there were literally hundreds of active novelists working during the Romantic and early Victorian era, and they were often both prolific and widely read. Many of these authors have been almost invisible for the past two centuries or so, in part because their works either did not "fit" standard definitions of Romantic and early-Victorian fiction or were not republished after their first appearance and therefore were lost to succeeding generations of readers. Their loss from nineteenth-century British literary culture, however, has meant that what students, scholars, and teachers have for many decades come to regard as the era's literary "landscape" is in fact quite different from the historical reality, a fact that has had large consequences for traditional assessments of British Romanticism and its Victorian sequel.
One of the most important developments in scholarship about later eighteenth and early nineteenth century British literature and culture has been the project of recovering historically neglected or marginalized writers, a development that has taken place principally in the last decade and a half and that continues unabated today as the lives and works of literally hundreds of authors are being reassessed for what they tell us not just about themselves but also for what they tell us about the complex, dynamic, and volatile culture of the early modern era. The results of these recovery projects are already beginning to have a profound effect upon scholarship (and teaching) concerning British Romanticism and Victorian literature. Indeed, the course you are presently taking, in "Romantic and Early Victorian Novels" is very different – both in content and in scope – from what a course by the same name might have been even so recently as ten years ago.
As part of your work for this course, you will make your own contribution to the recovery of neglected authors and works of the period as part of a critical exercise that will make a tangible contribution to scholarship both here at UNL and around the world, via the Internet. As part of a remarkably forward-thinking initiative, the University Libraries have acquired a microform collection called the "Edition Corvey," a collection that offers the best and most complete picture of Romantic and early Victorian literary writing and publishing in England (and France and Germany) to be found anywhere. The collection consists of microfiche copies of nearly ten thousand titles (many of them by women) of literary texts dating primarily from 1780- 1845. No comparable resource exists anywhere in the world – except, of course, at the Castle Corvey in Germany, where the original books are housed and where they have been micro-copied. Indeed, UNL is at this point one of only two universities in the United States to own the entire English, French, and German parts of the Corvey Collection.
For your project, I will ask you to select one of the novels from the Corvey Collection as the centerpiece for your own exercise in scholarly discovery and recovery. UNL has partnered with several British universities to develop materials for the study and evaluation of the works in the Corvey Collection, and we have elected to concentrate first on the works of women writers and lesser-known male novelists, primarily because those works (and their authors) have historically been the most marginalized, in spite of their considerable reputations in their own times and the large numbers of readers they enjoyed. I will give you a list of authors and works that are especially in need of attention, and I will ask that you select one novel for the basis of your work.
Here is what you will do:
1. Read the novel in its entirety. The novels are available on microfiche at the Microforms Collection in Love Library, where the staff will be prepared to help you with your work (they know about this assignment and about my expectations for you). You can make a paper copy of your novel (paying with a copycard) in the Microforms Room, or you can borrow a microfiche reader from Microforms (they have about a dozen available for free two-week, non-renewable rental). The Microforms staff will also make copies of the microfiches themselves for 25¢ each. Most novels are complete on no more than 4 fiches, so this is the cheapest way to read, though you do not get the advantage of a paper copy.
2. Prepare a synopsis of the novel. This is simply a basic plot summary, running to perhaps three or four typed pages. You can find samples of this and the other project documents on line at this link. You will find other samples on the Sheffield Hallam University Corvey Project website (I will demonstrate these resources in class). I will ask you to submit your synopsis in both a paper format and in electronic form (as a Microsoft Word document or attachment, if at all possible). My intention is to mount the synopses and other materials for use by students and scholars worldwide on a website I maintain for showcasing Studies in Romanticism here at UNL. These materials will appear with your name, so that you will have a genuine publication credit. More important, you will make a real contribution to scholarship in this genuinely important field.
3. Locate and transcribe as many reviews of the novel as you can from among periodicals (and other relevant sources) from the time of the novel's publication. UNL's Microforms Collection includes wonderful microfilm holdings in literary (and other) periodicals from England during the Romantic and early Victorian era, with bibliographical aids to help you find what you need. I will demonstrate some of these materials and how to use them, and the Microforms staff will be willing (and able) to help you at any time, when you go there to work. I will ask you to prepare these copies of reviews also in both conventional paper and electronic form (in MS Word format), the latter to be mounted on the Internet.
4. Find out as much as you can about the author, again using resources available at Love Library (and to some extent on the Internet), and prepare a brief critical biography of your author that pays particular attention to any circumstances connected with the novel you have chosen. These, too, should be prepared in paper and in electronic format.
5. Finally, prepare a concise critical essay on the novel you have chosen. You should try to assess the novel on its own terms (i. e., do a formal analysis), but that analysis should also reflect what you are learning both about your author (from your other research) and about the historical, cultural, and literary/intellectual milieu in which she or he worked (from what we do in our class sessions and what research you conduct on your own). For this essay, I shall ask you for two paper copies, one of which I will keep for the documentary archive I am assembling here at UNL to accompany the Corvey Collection materials. These essays will not be mounted publicly on the Internet.
6. Discuss your findings during the last several weeks of the course, when I have reserved class time for brief presentations by each of you. I would like to have you make sufficient copies of your novel synopsis for everyone in the class to have one. I will also hold open some class times during the semester for you to ask questions, report problems, and share progress.
Follow this link to find more detailed instructions about the required formats for various parts of your project.
Follow this link to find information about various resources that you will find useful in working on your project.
Follow this link for a complete list of all the novels from which you may choose when selecting a text for your project.
And follow this link to see which novels have already been selected (so you don't duplicate someone else's work).