The Nineteenth-Century English Novel

The novel was the most popular literary form in nineteenth-century England and continues to shape contemporary expectations of story-telling and character. Writers of the period used fiction to explore challenging issues of the day: poverty, industrialization, the growth of cities, the expansion of empire, changes in the family, and the relations between the sexes. This course will examine the representation of social and psychological experience in important novels of the period. Authors to be studied include Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, and Wilde. For students with two other upper-level (3000-level or above) English courses, this course may serve as the capstone for the Tier III requirement.