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 to analyse in great depth. |