English 305A:

The English Novel 1700-1900

Fall 2002

Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews Hall    
phone: 472-1806     

office hours:           
10:00 - 11:00 TR     
and by appointment

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James Gillray, Wife or No Wife

Tentative Schedule

Aug 27  T    Introductory matters:
                    – Reading novels vs. reading visual art and music
                    – With what was the early English novel competing?
                    – Variations on the theme of identity:
                        1. The orphan
                        2. The "lost child"
                        3. The broken family

       29  R    Background(s) to the English novel:
                    – History, cultural history, literary history and the parameters of this course
                    Begin reading Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Sep   3  T    Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
                    background report: John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress

         5  R    Defoe
         6  F     Last day to drop and have this course removed from your permanent record. After today (and until 15 November) a "W" will appear on your record with a withdrawal notation.

       10  T     Defoe
       12  R     finish Defoe

       17  T     Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews
                    William Hogarth, The Harlot's Progress (visual narrative; in class)
       19  R     Fielding

       24  T     Fielding
                    Group Presentation on Fielding
       26  R     finish Fielding

Oct   1  T     Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
                     background reports: — Edmund Burke A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful
                                                     — The Gothic
         3  R     Walpole
                    Group Presentation on Walpole
         8  T     finish Walpole
       10  R     Midterm Examination

       15  T     Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
                     background report: women writers, women readers
       17  R     Austen
                    Group Presentation on Austen
       18  F     Last day to change your registration for this course to or from "Pass/No Pass"

       22  T     Fall Semester Break — No Class
       24  R     finish Austen
                    background report: the Jane Austen craze

       29  T     Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
                     background report: Science and technology in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution
       31  R     Shelley
                    Group Presentation on Shelley

Nov  5  T      Shelley
                     background report: some literary (and other) sources: Aeschylus, Milton, Coleridge, P. B. Shelley, Fuseli, E. Darwin
         7  R     Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

       12  T     Brontë
                    Group Presentation on Brontë
       14  R     finish Brontë
                     background report: "Byron" after Byron
       15  F     Last day to withdraw from this course

       19  T     Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
       21  R     Dickens
                    Group Presentation on Dickens

       26  T     Dickens
       28  R     Thanksgiving holiday

Dec   3  T     Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
                    Course Project due in class today
         5  R     Stevenson
                    Group Presentation on Stevenson

       10  T     finish Stevenson
       12  R    Concluding matters

Final Examination: Monday, 16 December; 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.