Fall 2009

E 328 • English Novel in the Nineteenth Century-- HONORS

Course Description

Please refer to the course schedule for course days, time, room location, prerequisites and possible cross-listings: http://registrar.utexas.edu/schedules/

Victorian Children's Literature-- In this course, we will read works of children’s literature from the Victorian Period side-by-side with "serious" works by the same authors. Our focus will be on locating shared preoccupations, and assessing the various ways in which those preoccupations are inflected or transformed when a different imagined audience is addressed. We will consider how social, moral, and political beliefs are encoded in fables, tall-tales, and adventure stories, how such works can be subversive or reactionary (or both), and how they can hold unique expressive and aesthetic possibilities for child and adult reader alike. At the same time, we will question the grounds on which we can make distinctions between these two categories. Lastly, we will consider the ways in which the child reader, and childhood in general, were imagined by the various authors we read, and (tentatively) by the culture as a whole.

Grading Policy

A 5-6 page "close-reading" of a single text; A 6-7 page comparative essay; A final 10-page research paper

Texts

Readings may include: John Ruskin: The King of the Golden River, selected essays; Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Beach of Falesa; Charles Dickens: A Holiday Romance, Oliver Twist; Oscar Wilde: The Happy Prince and Other Stories, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," “The Decay of Lying”; Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass; Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows, The Golden Age

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