Jay Clayton - English 318: Victorian Novel, 1851-1867

<h1 align="CENTER">The Victorian Novel, 1851-1867</h1> <h1 align="CENTER">Exhibitionism to Reform</h1> <hr width="100%"> <h3 align="CENTER">Jay Clayton Department of English Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37235 <a href="mailto:claytojb@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu">claytojb@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu</a></h3> <hr width="100%"> <h3 align="CENTER"><a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/318reading.htm">Reading</a> <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/318biblio.htm">Bibliography</a> <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/318requirements.htm">Requirements</a> <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/318visual.htm">Visual Materials</a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">Newsgroup</a></h3> <hr width="100%"> <h2><img src="bulletrd.gif" height="15" width="15"> Overview</h2> <ul> The years from the Great Exhibition (1851) to the Second Reform Bill (1867) were a period of enormous vitality in the English novel. Major works by Dickens, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Trollope, George Eliot, Gaskell, and others capitalized on the burgeoning of serial publication and circulating libraries; on unprecedented growth of consumer capitalism at home and imperial dominance abroad; on worshipful audiences ranging from distinguished literary critics, to eminent leaders of society and politics, to vast numbers of middle and lower class readers. The result was a novel of confident power and narrative scope. By focusing on this period, we are able to survey many of the major authors of Victorian fiction while attending closely to a specific set of historical developments, class relations, and gender issues. </ul> <hr width="100%"> <h2><img src="bulletrd.gif" height="15" width="15"> Reading</h2> <ul> We will read eight representative works of fiction: Dickens's Bleak House (1852-53); Thackeray's Henry Esmond (1852); Charlotte Bronte's Villette (1853); Gaskell's North and South (1854-55); Collins's The Woman in White (1860); Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862); George Eliot's Felix Holt, The Radical (1866); and Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset (1866-67). These texts include industrial novels, sensation fiction, multiplot novels, fictional autobiographies, historical fiction, and mysteries, demonstrating the enormous formal variety hidden under the deceptive phrase "nineteenth-century realism." In addition, students will present two oral reports, one on a major critical book treating the fiction of this period, another on an important intellectual document--e.g., Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859), Smiles's Self-Help (1859), Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861), Mill's Utilitarianism (1862), or Bagehot's The English Constitution (1867). </ul> <center> <a href="318reading.htm"><img src="books.gif" border="0" height="42" width="44"></a> Go to Required Reading</center> <hr width="100%"> <h2><a name="318calendar"></a><img src="bulletrd.gif" height="15" width="15"> Course Calendar</h2> Week 1 - (Tuesday, Jan 14, 1997): The Great Exhibition of 1851 <center><table width="50%"> <tr> <td>"1851 was a year of such excitement that many young Victorians looked back on it with nostalgia for the rest of their lives, and many old Georgians regarded it as the climax of English history" (<a href="318epigraphs.htm#briggs2">Asa Briggs</a>).</td> </tr> </table></center> <ul> <li>Reading</li> <ul> <li>Charles Dickens, "The Great Exhibition and the Little One" Household Words (1851) - (Graduate Division, 312 Benson)</li> <li>Karl Marx, "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof," from Capital, vol. 1 (1867) - (Graduate Division, 312 Benson) </li> <li>Susan Buck-Morss, excerpts from The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project - (Graduate Division, 312 Benson)</li> <li>Tony Bennett, "The Exhibitionary Complex" - (Graduate Division, 312 Benson)</li> <li>Thomas Richards, "The Great Exhibition of Things," ch. 1 of The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914 - (Graduate Division, 312 Benson)</li> </ul> <li>Recommended Reading</li> <ul> <li>Asa Briggs, "The Crystal Palace and the Men of 1851," Victorian People</li> <li>Andrew Miller, "Spaces of Exchange: Interpreting the Great Exhibition of 1851," ch. 2 of Novels Behind Glass: Commodity, Culture, and Victorian Narrative (1995)</li> </ul> </ul> <center><table width="50%"> <tr align="CENTER" valign="CENTER"> <td align="CENTER" valign="CENTER"> <center><a href="318visual.htm"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/askate.gif" vspace="2" border="0" height="50" width="50"></a> <a href="318visual">Visual Materials: Great Exhibition</a></center> </td> <td> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/modem1.gif" border="0" height="50" width="70"></a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">News: Laura Patterson</a></td> </tr> </table></center> <hr width="100%"> Week 2 - (Tuesday, Jan. 21, 1997): Dickens, Bleak House, Parts I-IX <center><table width="50%"> <tr> <td>"God send that we all meet in 1851 under the shadow of some huge, newly-invented machine. I mean to exhibit four three-volume novels--all failures--which I look upon as a great proof of industry." (<a href="318epigraphs.htm#trollope">Anthony Trollope</a>)</td> </tr> </table></center> <ul> <li>Secondary reading</li> <ul> <li>Jennifer Wicke, "The Dickens Advertiser," in Advertising Fictions (Benson 312 and Reserve Room)</li> </ul> <li>Electronic versions of Bleak House </li> <ul> <li>E-texts (none available)</li> <li>Annotated <a href="http://athena.english.vt.edu/LIT/dickens/wrapper.html">hypertext</a> (Under construction in Virginia Tech online course, "Bleak House and London") </li> </ul> <li>Resources on the Web (For general Victorian sites, see the course Bibliography page)</li> <ul> <li><a href="http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Dickens.html">The Dickens Page</a> (Comprehensive site - maintained by Mitsuharu Matsuoka, Nagoya University, Japan.)</li> <li><a href="http://humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/index.html">The Dickens Project</a> </li> <li><a href="http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/dickens/dickensov.html">Dickens on the Victorian Web</a> (The Dickens Page of George Landow's site at Brown) </li> <li>Critical articles on Bleak House </li> <ul> <li>Allan Pritchard, <a href="http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU:8080/scan/ncl-e/454/articles/pritchard.art454.html">"The Urban Gothic of Bleak House"</a> (complete text - NCL, March 1991) </li> <li>Robert Newsom, <a href="http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU:8080/scan/ncl-e/461/articles/newsom.art461.html">"Villette and Bleak House: Authorizing Women"</a> (complete text - NCL, June 1991) </li> <li>Dona Budd, <a href="http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU:8080/scan/ncl-e/492/articles/budd.art492.html">"Language Couples in Bleak House"</a> (complete text - NCL, September 1994) </li> <li>Peter Thomas, <a href="http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU:8080/scan/ncl-e/502/articles/thoms.art502.html">"'The Narrow Track of Blood': Detection and Storytelling in Bleak House"</a> (complete text - NCL, September 1995) </li> </ul> </ul> </ul> <center><table cellpadding="5" width="50%"> <tr align="CENTER" valign="CENTER"> <td><a href="318biblio.htm#8contents"><img src="file:///C|/Network/Netscape/Program/Program/Mypages/filecab.gif" border="0" height="50" width="50"></a> <a href="318biblio.htm#8contents">Dickens Bibliography</a></td> <td> <center> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/modem1.gif" border="0" height="50" width="70"></a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">News: Kurt Koenigsberger</a></center> </td> </tr> </table></center> <hr width="100%"> <a name="318calendar"></a>Week 3 - (Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1997): Dickens, Bleak House, Parts X-XIX <center><table width="50%"> <tr> <td>"I have always had an instinctive feeling against the Exhibition, of a faint inexplicable sort." (<a href="318epigraphs.htm#dickens">Charles Dickens</a>)</td> </tr> </table></center> <ul> <li>Secondary reading </li> <ul> <li>D. A. Miller, "Discipline in Different Voices: Bureaucracy, Police, Family, and Bleak House," in The Novel and the Police (Reserve Room) </li> </ul> <li>Oral Report: Lisa Barnes on Amanda Anderson, Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: the Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture (1993)</li> </ul> <center><table cellpadding="5" width="50%"> <tr align="CENTER" valign="CENTER"> <td><a href="318visual.htm"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/askate.gif" vspace="2" border="0" height="50" width="50"></a> <a href="318visual">Visual Materials: Bleak House</a></td> <td> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/modem1.gif" border="0" height="50" width="70"></a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">News: Monika Schramm</a></td> </tr> </table></center> <hr width="100%"> Week 4 - (Tuesday, Feb. 4, 1997): Thackeray, Henry Esmond <ul> <li>Secondary reading </li> <li>Oral Report: Laura Patterson on Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Night: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (1992)</li> <li>Electronic versions of Henry Esmond </li> <ul> <li>E-text (none available)</li> </ul> <li>Resources on the Web</li> <ul> <li>Critical articles on Thackeray (complete texts)</li> <ul> <li>Gary R. Dyer, <a href="http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU:8080/scan/ncl-e/462/articles/dyer.art462.html">"The 'Vanity Fair' of Nineteenth-Century England: Commerce, Women, and the East in the Ladies' Bazaar"</a> (complete text - NCL)</li> <li>Laura Fasick, <a href="http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU:8080/scan/ncl-e/471/articles/fasick.art471.html">"Thackeray's Treatment of Writing and Painting"</a> (complete text - NCL)</li> </ul> </ul> </ul> <center><table cellpadding="5" width="50%"> <tr align="CENTER" valign="CENTER"> <td><a href="318biblio.htm#11contents"><img src="file:///C|/Network/Netscape/Program/Program/Mypages/filecab.gif" border="0" height="50" width="50"></a> <a href="318biblio.htm#11contents">Thackeray Bibliography</a></td> <td> <center> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/modem1.gif" border="0" height="50" width="70"></a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">News: Christopher Lamping</a></center> </td> </tr> </table></center> <hr width="100%"> Week 5 - (Tuesday, Feb. 11, 1997): Thackeray and the Mid-Victorian Literary World <ul> <li>Reading </li> <ul> <li>Feltes, "Equipoise and the Three-Decker: The Production of Henry Esmond," ch. 2 of Modes of Production of Victorian Novels - (Reserve room)</li> </ul> <li>Oral Report: Julie Schuetz on Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (1987)</li> <li>Recommended reading</li> <ul> <li>Eve Sedgwick, "Adam Bede and Henry Esmond: Homosocial Desire and the Historicity of the Female," ch. 8 of Between Men </li> </ul> </ul> <center><a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/modem1.gif" border="0" height="50" width="70"></a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">News: Paige Davis</a></center> <hr width="100%"> Week 6 - (Tuesday, Feb. 18, 1997): Charlotte Brontë, Villette <ul> <li>Secondary reading </li> <li>Oral Report: Lara Newborn </li> <li>Electronic versions of Villette </li> <ul> <li>E-text (none available)</li> </ul> <li>Resources on the Web</li> </ul> <center><table cellpadding="5" width="50%"> <tr align="CENTER" valign="CENTER"> <td><a href="318biblio.htm#6contents"><img src="file:///C|/Network/Netscape/Program/Program/Mypages/filecab.gif" border="0" height="50" width="50"></a> <a href="318biblio.htm#6contents">Brontë Bibliography</a></td> <td><a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/modem1.gif" border="0" height="50" width="70"></a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">News: Julie Schuetz</a></td> </tr> </table></center> <hr width="100%"> Week 7 - (Tuesday, Feb. 25, 1997): Villette and Victorian Sexuality <ul> <li>Reading </li> <ul> <li>Gay </li> <li>Mason </li> </ul> <li>Oral Report: Kurt Koenigsberger on Harriet Martineau, British Rule in India: A Historical Sketch (1857)</li> <li>Resources on the Web </li> <ul> <li>Deborah Epstein Nord, <a href="http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU:8080/scan/ncl-e/463/articles/nord.art463.html">"The Urban Peripatetic: Spectator, Streetwalker, Woman Writer"</a> (complete text - NCL)</li> </ul> </ul> <center><a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/modem1.gif" border="0" height="50" width="70"></a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">News: Lara Newborn</a></center> <hr width="100%"> Spring Break (March 1-9, 1997) <hr width="100%"> Week 8 - (Tuesday, Mar. 11, 1997): Gaskell, North and South. First version of research paper due. <ul> <li>Secondary reading</li> <ul> <li>Hilary M. Schor, "North and South, Marriage, and the Romance of a Common Language," ch. 4 of Scheherezade in the Marketplace (Reserve room)</li> </ul> <li>Oral Report: Kin Cosner on Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)</li> <li>Recommended reading </li> <ul> <li>Deirdre David, Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels: North and South, Our Mutual Friend, Daniel Deronda</li> <li>Catherine Gallagher, "Family and Society in Hard Times and North and South," ch. 7 of The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction (Reserve Room)</li> <li>Judith Lowder Newton, ch. on North and South in Women, Power and Subversion: Social Strategies in British Fiction, 1778-1860</li> <li>Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, pp. 87-109</li> </ul> <li>Electronic versions of North and South </li> <ul> <li><a href="http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/EG-N&S-1.html">E-text</a> (Maintained by Mitsuharu Matsuoka, Nagoya University, Japan.) </li> </ul> <li>Resources on the Web</li> <ul> <li>Critical articles on North and South (complete texts)</li> <ul> <li>Dorice Williams Elliott, <a href="http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU:8080/scan/ncl-e/491/articles/elliott.art491.html">"The Female Visitor and the Marriage of Classes in Gaskell's North and South"</a> (complete text - NCL) </li> </ul> </ul> </ul> <center><table cellpadding="5" width="50%"> <tr align="CENTER" valign="CENTER"> <td><a href="318biblio.htm#10contents"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/filecab.gif" border="0" height="50" width="50"></a> <a href="318biblio.htm#10contents">Gaskell Bibliography</a></td> <td><a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/modem1.gif" border="0" height="50" width="70"></a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">News: Kin Cosner</a></td> </tr> </table></center> <hr width="100%"> Week 9 - (Tuesday, Mar. 18, 1997): George Eliot, Felix Holt <ul> <li>Recommended reading </li> <ul> <li>Catherine Gallagher, "The Politics of Culture and the Debate over Representation in the 1860s," ch. 9 The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction (Reserve Room)</li> </ul> <li>Oral Report: Monika Schramm on Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)</li> <li>Electronic versions of Felix Holt </li> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/eliot/holt/">E-text</a> (Constructed by Peter Batke, Princeton University)</li> </ul> <li>Resources on the Web</li> </ul> <center><table cellpadding="5" width="50%"> <tr align="CENTER" valign="CENTER"> <td><a href="318biblio.htm#9contents"><img src="file:///C|/Network/Netscape/Program/Program/Mypages/filecab.gif" border="0" height="50" width="50"></a> <a href="318biblio.htm#9contents">George Eliot Bibliography</a></td> <td><a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01"><img src="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/modem1.gif" border="0" height="50" width="70"></a> <a href="news:vu.english.eng318.s01">News: Lisa Barnes</a></td> </tr> </table></center> <hr width="100%"> Week 10 - (Tuesday, Mar. 25, 1997): Gaskell, George Eliot, and the Industrial Novel <ul> <li>Reading </li> <li>Oral Report: Paige Davis</li> </ul> <hr width="100%"> Week 11 - (Tuesday, Apr. 1, 1997): Collins, The Woman in White <ul> <li>Secondary reading </li> <ul> <li>D. A. Miller, "Cage aux folles: Sensation and Gender in Wilkie Collin's The Woman in White," in The Novel and the Police (Reserve Room)</li> </ul> <li>Oral Report: Christopher Lamping</li> <li>Electronic versions of The Woman in White </li> <ul> <li><a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixed-new?id=ColWoma&tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed">E-text</a> (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia - Recommended) </li> <li><a href="http://www.bibliomania.com/Fiction/collins/WomanInWhite/index.html">E-text</a> (Bibliomania) </li> <li><a href="http://www.ualberta.ca/~amactavi/ww-head.htm">E-text</a> (Victorian Sensationalism Online - divided into the serial parts [under construction])</li> </ul> <li>Resources on the Web </li> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.ualberta.ca/~amactavi/sens1.htm">Victorian Sensationalism Online</a> (Maintained by Andrew.Mactavish, University of Alberta.) </li> <li><a href="http://members.gnn.com/MGrost/sensatio.htm">British Sensation Fiction</a> (Web-based hypertext on the connection between sensation fiction and the mystery novel. Maintained by Michael E. Grost, "a mystery fan who lives near Detroit, Michigan")</li> </ul> </ul> <center><a href="318biblio.htm#7contents"><img src="filecab.gif" border="0" height="62" width="64"></a> <a href="318biblio.htm#7contents">Collins Bibliography</a> </center> <hr width="100%"> Week 12 - (Tuesday, Apr. 8, 1997): Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret <ul> <li>Secondary reading </li> <li>Electronic versions of Lady Audley's Secret </li> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.ualberta.ca/~amactavi/las-head.htm">E-text</a> (Victorian Sensationalism Online - divided into the serial parts[under construction])</li> </ul> <li>Resources on the Web </li> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.ualberta.ca/~amactavi/sens1.htm">Victorian Sensationalism Online</a> (Maintained by Andrew Mactavish, University of Alberta.) </li> </ul> </ul> <center><a href="318biblio.htm#5contents"><img src="filecab.gif" border="0" height="50" width="50"></a> <a href="318biblio.htm#5contents">Braddon Bibliography</a> </center> <hr width="100%"> Week 13 - (Tuesday, Apr. 15, 1997): Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset, vol. I <ul> <li>Secondary reading </li> <li>Electronic versions of The Last Chronicle of Barset </li> <ul> <li>E-text (none available)</li> </ul> <li>Resources on the Web</li> </ul> <center><a href="318biblio.htm#12contents"><img src="filecab.gif" border="0" height="50" width="50"></a> <a href="318biblio.htm#12contents">Trollope Bibliography</a> </center> <hr width="100%"> Week 14 - (Tuesday, Apr. 22, 1997): Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset, vol. II <ul> <li>Secondary Reading</li> </ul> <hr width="100%"> Revised paper due: Tuesday, April 29, 4:00 p.m. <hr width="100%">