English 105 b
After Jane Austen: Sex, Death and Fiction
Fall 2017 MW 3:30-4:50 Schiffman 122
Professor: John Plotz
; office hours: Rabb 264, W 2-3 and by appt.
How do novels that were both popular entertainment and moral/spiritual guides in their own time reach us today? Victorian plots, their ideas about character and personality, and their models of sympathy and ethical responsibility resonate in not just contemporary films, but in fundamental notions of what defines a person, and what sorts of sympathy are possible between strangers or between intimates.
The idea of this class is to spend enough time with individual novels to begin to appreciate each writer’s style, formal repertoire, and perhaps most important each writer’s notions about what’s representable in the novel—and what a novel can and should do to its readers. Along the way, the texts will be opened up by comparison to a variety of later works that borrow from them—plots, sexual intrigues, or formal features. The heart of the course is intense close reading, coupled with comparisons to visual art and other literature of the period. The central ideas we will explore include: the tension between romantic love and familial duty, the gap between individual experience and societal wisdom, the importance of individual character, the durability of class differences, the nature of both economic and spiritual impoverishment. As time allows, we will also look at how these ideas get reframed and rethought in later texts, or in other art forms, including contemporary film.
Week 1
8/30 Introduction: How do Novels Start?
9/6 Sense and Sensibility Volume 1 (3-102) Romantic poetry (distributed in class)
Introduction to free indirect discourse
Week 2
9/11 SS vol 2 (103-193; also vii-xlvi; 290-299) [film clips]
Michael Warner, “Uncritical Reading” (especially pp. 13-20)
[Marcel Proust, “On Reading Ruskin” esp 99-103]
First Latte post due at 10 p.m. 9/12
9/13 SS vol. 3 (193-290) [S]
Alex Woloch, from The One Vs. the Many
Rudyard Kipling, “The Janeites” (1926) [supplemental “Janeite” article, 2017]
Week 3:
9/18 Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre Volume 1
Georg Simmel, “The Stranger”
9/20 Jane Eyre, Volume 2
[Marcus,” Abstraction Authors and Advertising”]
Week 4:
9/25 Jane Eyre; Volume 3Florence Nightingale, “Cassandra”
9/27 Jane Eyre
Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?”
[start on George Eliot, “The Lifted Veil”]
first paper due at 4 pm.
Week 5:
10/2 “The Lifted Veil”
10/4 Jefferies After London, “The Relapse into Barbarism” and “Wild England” chs 1-2, [recc. Final 6 chapters, (chs 23-28) plus “The Great Snow” (alternative ending)]
Week 6:
10/9 Margaret Oliphant, Hester (chs 1-9, pp 5-88)
10/11 NO CLASS (BRANDEIS THURSDAY)…but see the readings below….
Hester (chs 10-20, pp. 89-190 mostly skim but focus on ch 19 “Confidences”]
Week 7, Domesticity and Gender
10/16 Hester(skim 190- 365, but focus on ch 25 “A Double Mind”; ch 27 “A centre of life” chs 30-31 “The Party at the Grange” and “Business and Love”)
Georg Simmel, “Metropolis and Mental Life”
10/18 Hester, read to end (pp 365-456)
Week 8: Decadence, New Women, Naturalism
10/23 Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray 185-298
10/25 Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray 3-4, 299-375
Week 9-10
10/3 Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Prefaces, Phases 1-2 (1-114)
11/1 Tess, Phases 3-4 (115-244) plus poetry (on Latte)
Raymond Williams from The City and the Country
[John Barrell, “Hardy’s Wessex”]
11/6 Hardy, Tess Phases 5-6 (245-386)
Gillian Beer, from Darwin’s Plots
11/8 Tess, Phase 7 (387-end)
final research paper proposal due
Week 11-12
11/13Intro to Modernism: [Joyce, “The Dead”]
Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier Part 1
11/15 Ford The Good Soldier Part 2-3
11/20 Ford, Part 4 (plus Intro, plus “On Impressionism” 197-213)
Elizabeth Mansfield , “The Fly” and “The Garden Party”
Week 12-13
11/27 Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (pp 3-102)
11/29 Mrs Dalloway (102-end)
12/4 Dalloway,
P G Wodehouse, Wooster stories……TBD
12/6 Conclusion final paper due
Course Expectations:
2 sorts of Latte posts required
1. Early on, you will be signing up for a particular day when you will be “on”: this means that you will post a longer, more substantial and thought-out blog entry (this will be a graded piece); you should have a guiding idea, and cite ample textual evidence to back it up.
2. If you are not “on” for a given week, you’ll submit some sort of response, addition, or other contribution by Tuesday night at 10 pm (preferably earlier). I expect that usually, those will take up a thread laid down by one of the “on” bloggers, but they need not. Those responses will be ungraded, but you are expected to read all the postings for any given week (Latte I set up so that your writing and reading of blogs is registered automatically). You must post one response each week: they form a significant part of your grade.
Papers: There are only two graded papers (aside from the latte assignment); paper assignments will be distributed well in advance. We are happy to look at drafts on any assignment (including the long blog entry) so long as they are received by FIVE days before the assignment is due. (John will read and respond e-mailed drafts in Word, and respond electronically.)
- a short close-reading paper, due Wednesday September 27
- A longer paper: Proposal due Wednesday November 8th.
Final paper due Wednesday December 6th
All papers due in hard copy at 4 pm on the given day, in my box in the English department Rabb Hall 144.
Rewrites are welcome on the first paper, and we urge you to visit the Brandeis Writing Center in the Goldfarb Library (x64885) for help at any time during the semester. Papers should be original explorations of the material presented in class. What we mainly hope to see is well structured arguments about issues raised in class, supported by careful close reading of the texts we have read together. A successful paper will involve clear exposition of your own ideas and a reliable account of the textual evidence that leads you to your inferences. (Please see us for an explanation of grading criteria, if you are interested.) When appropriate, your papers should make use of secondary sources or other primary sources from outside the classroom: We will be happy to suggest suitable additional reading or other material, depending on the direction that your interests take you. We will return typed comments to you with every paper, and will happily respond to drafts handed in up to five days before a paper is due.
Reading quizzes: throughout the semester as warranted; if you are up to date on reading it will be very straightforward to get full credit and hence to beef up your grade.
Grading:
Papers: 55 % (first 20%, second 35%)
Class Participation: 45%
(graded posting: 15%, weekly contributions: 10%; in-class/in-section participation: 10%; reading quizzes 15%) [Unexcused absences and days without books will be factored in; three unexcused absences or more may result in a substantially lowered grade.]
Books: cannot be rented—they must be purchased and marked up. This is partly so we can be on the same page in class discussion (a very important consideration), but there also crucial editorial decisions (and sometimes vital supplementary material) in these editions that will be important for our understanding of the books. If costs are an issue, please contact us: Making use of university funds earmarked for this purpose we can ensure you are able to participate fully in the course, which will rely on marking up your texts,
Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility (Oxford, 9780199535576)
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre. (Oxford, 0199535590)
Richard Jefferies After London (Dover, 48679749X)
Margaret Oliphant, Hester (Oxford, 199555494)
Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray (Norton, 0393927547) Vital: only this edition
Thomas Hardy Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Oxford, 0199537054)
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (Oxford, 9780199585946)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, (Mariner, 0156628708)
Recommended but not required (can be read online)
George Eliot, The Lifted Veil (Oxford, 0199555052)