Spring reading lists

1.  Seminar in British Writers: First Person Narrators

• Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent
• James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
• Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
• Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
• Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
• Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
• Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier

2.  Women in the Novel*

• Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
• Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
• Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
• Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret
• George Eliot, Middlemarch

In terms of prep time, the first course will be more time-consuming than the second, as I've only taught two of the novels before.  The students will find it more time-consuming for another reason, although only one of the novels--guess which one?--actually qualifies as a loose, baggy monster.  As you can see from the distribution, I was trying for a mix of narrators reliable and unreliable, nested and "edited." 

The second course is one of my regular assignments, slightly revised. (I yanked Mona Caird's Daughters of Danaus--ye gods, that was dreadful--and added longer Anne Bronte.)  I'm not a particularly big fan of Lady Audley's Secret--in fact, I don't much like the novel at all--but students always adore it, and I like to give advanced kids a taste of high-quality Victorian schlock.  Besides, they'll need a momentary respite before diving into Middlemarch. 

Unless there's a revolution in the respective course enrollments, I'll be teaching the first course as advertised--a seminar--and the second course as a lecture.  "Women in the Novel" fulfills an upper-division GE requirement, so it always winds up with a fairly substantial population. 

*--Or, as I've taken to calling it, "the Bronte sisters and some other people."

Comments

[What Now?]

These sound like really fun classes! I keep saying that I'm going to sit in on some of my colleague's undergraduate courses, and I love the idea of being a student in someone else's class and having the thrill of fun classes again, but of course I never have time, what with my own full-time teaching schedule. So I envy your students who will be getting to read the Brontes and some other people!

[diogenes]

Students need the Brontes and Austen's sentimental, tea sipper potboilers about as much as they need basketweaving courses.

Let here it for book burnings: Wuthering Dykes on top, next to a Riverside Shakeyspeare and Middlemarch, Norton Collection of English Verse etc. Try Stats 101.

Give us another BF Skinner, ye gotts

[Jonathan]

Thank you for the link to the biographical essay on Ford Maddox Ford.

His name caught my eye because of an art class assignment I had a few years back that concerned a painting by Janice Biala.

Now there is a very interesting literary and visual arts span from the Pre-Raphealites to the abstract!

I've never read any of his books but I will rack down "The Good Soldier" and a few others mentioned in the essay once I get back in the good graces of my local library.

I hate to date myself, but I never payed so many library overdue fines when they actually stamped the books with the return date!

[C maddox]

thank you for your site. I throughly enjoyed reading it. One of the best.