Fiction and social transformation: Nineteenth-century novels

This module focuses on a selection of nineteenth-century novels, approached from a variety of historical and critical perspectives. The main topics we will address include: fiction and science (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein); the industrial novel (Charles Dickens’Hard Times and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South); the individual and society (Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations); fiction and economic change (George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and George Gissing’s New Grub Street). By comparing female- and male-authored novels, the module will investigate issues of gender as they relate to social and cultural codifications. Particular attention will be devoted to formal aspects (narrative structure, realism, the genres of Victorian fiction, and its problem-solving strategies) and to the fraught relation between Victorian ideologies and narrative discourse (bourgeois ‘values’, models of subjectivity, the novel as a form of intervention within a changing social world). The aim of this module is to introduce students to the rich variety of nineteenth-century novels and to develop theirability to think critically about the relationships between literature and history.

This is an introductory, lecture-based module: the novels will all be analysed in class, but students are required to choose only 3 out of 7 novels for the exam. Novels should be read in the original version (in English), but students can use the Italian translation if needed. Lessons are in English. However, since this is a first-year course, and students are likely to have different levels of competence in English, they have the option to take the oral exam in Italian. Alongside novels, students are also required to read (attentively) at least 2 critical articles for each novel selected and the introduction to “The Victorian Era” in The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. These secondary sources are of great help in understanding the subtleties of nineteenth-century prose and the broader context. Both primary and secondary sources will be made available (in PDF format) on the Teams platform only to students registered for this class.

TEXTS - PRIMARY SOURCES

Students will choose 3 out of 7 novels for the exam

All texts are available in electronic format on the Teams Platform.

1) (A) “The Victorian Era”, in The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, 2013, pp. XLILXXXVI

2) (A) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818), any edition

3) (A) Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853), Broadview Press

4) (A) Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861), any edition

5) (A) Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854), any edition

6) (A) Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1855), any edition

7) (A) George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860), any edition

8) (A) George Gissing New Grub Street (1891), any edition