Class Description/Organizing Questions/Requirements

English 793: Victorian Conversations Spring 2008
P. Laurence

Victorian novels as a genre offer us an opportunity to observe the socialization of the individual. Often these individuals are uncertain of their place in society: orphans, the poor, women, Irish, Indians, Jews, and Muslims, among others. These works also offer us a geographic structure in which England is placed at the center, and English colonies at the periphery. Certain themes emerge that relate to homelessness, class, gender, imperialism, colonialism, orientalism, civilization, progress, and modernity. The reading of Victorian and some Modern works will be paired in this course to illuminate these literary and cultural issues and conversations.

For example, there is a conversation about British orientalism, colonialism, Irish, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhism in the shift from Rudyard Kipling’s Kim to Mulk Raj Anand’s The Untouchables; another conversation about how minorities are represented in the Victorian novel in the pairing of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.

Some of the questions that will organize this course are: What shift in sensibility, ideas and narration can be observed in these paired readings? What novels can be viewed as sites of exchange for international dialogues? How is history and time represented in Victorian and Modern writing? How did English writers benefit from exposure to oriental cultures and literatures? How did other cultures and literatures benefit from contact with British culture and novels? Can we hear a polyphony of literary and cultural voices in the British novels to be read, as theorized by Mikhail Bakhtin? What kind literary dreamwork-- imagined communities, the way in which we imagine people, ideas and communities in other nations, as posited by Benedict Anderson—can be detected in these novels? How is the emerging issue of the minority within both a historical and literary issue? How does it change the culture and narration of the Victorian and Modernist British novel as well as transnational writing?

Requirements: One short, one longer paper, and one oral report required. Final exam. Regular attendance and class participation as well as responses to discussion questions on the class blog. Two absences allowed.

Office hours: Thursdays: 2:30-3:30 or by appointment (Boylan 2, Room 157)

E-mail: plaurence@rcn.com

Blog: Official class handouts on line. Post responses to bi-weekly topics; join the class conversation.
BCVictorian@blogspot.com