ENG 324: Nineteenth-Century British Novel

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When most of us think about novels, the nineteenth century British novel is what comes to mind. Jane Austen, the Brontes, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy: these are just a few of these authors that made the nineteenth century literature the golden age of the British novel, in general, and of British realism, in particular. This course will explore novelistic fiction of the 1800s to ask what exactly makes realism realistic. We will thus ask what about these texts encourages us to imagine we’re reading about real people with thoughts, feelings, and histories much like our own. We will also examine what makes them unrealistic though more in the sense of what violates the illusion of realism. What, in other words, makes us aware of the fact that we’re not actually observing real people acting autonomously in the world but characters in a text?

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Department

English