Abstract: |
This course illustrates how literary theory is applied to the nineteenth-century novel. The approach is basically practical, focussing on how formalism, Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis (to name a few schools) have studied fiction, and how you, as students, read both fiction and critical material. The nineteenth-century novel is chosen for two basic reasons: first, for its focus on the modern institutions of life which theory has taken a deep interest in, such as romance, marriage, the family, the nation-state; second, the nineteenth-century novel not only represents the golden age of English literature but it is also the genre and century which all critical schools have arguably felt the need. |