English 252 - Spring, 2014

Victorian Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Miller, Elizabeth
CRN: 42932
Time: M 3:10-6:00
Location: 120 Voorhies
Breadth: Later British
Focus: Genre

Description

Realism and Sensation in the Mid-Victorian Novel

“Among English novels of the present day, and among English novelists, a great division is made. There are sensational novels, and anti-sensational; sensational novelists, and anti-sensational; sensational readers, and anti-sensational. The novelists who are considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic. … All this we think to be a mistake. … A good novel should be both, -- and both in the highest degree.” – Anthony Trollope, 1879

What exactly was “realism” in the period before naturalism? This class will consider the realist novel as a historical form that emerged, in part, through opposition to rival forms such as the sensation novel. Part of our task will be to interrogate the truth of such an opposition, as Trollope does in the above quotation, considering how “sensation” makes its way into “realist” novels and vice versa. We will also examine a series of related questions, such as: What kind of moral expectations inflect sensation versus realist novels? How do we distinguish “sensation” from the Gothic? How did stage melodrama manifest in sensation novels, and in realist ones? We will also consider questions of form. Were the effects of “sensation” or “realism” dependent on particular modes of serial publication? And, given that most of the novels we will study are quite long, we will also ask whether the long novel poses particular demands in the creation of sensational or realistic effects.

Grading

Seminar paper, presentation, participation

Texts

Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
Middlemarch, George Eliot
The Eustace Diamonds, Anthony Trollope
Under the Greenwood Tree, Thomas Hardy