8:90
Victorian Fiction: Course Information and Assignments
M W 1:30-2:20, Room 213 EPB
Instructor: Florence Boos florence-boos@uiowa.edu
http://english.uiowa.edu/courses/boos/victfcition08
Office: 319 EPB, office phone 335-0434 (answering machine)
Office hours: most afternoons after class until 3 p. m.; Fridays 3-4 p. m.
Textbooks at IMU:
- Moran, Maureen, Victorian Literature and Culture, 2006.
- Dickens, Charles, Our Mutual Friend.
- Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch.
- Kipling, Rudyard. Kim.
- Gissing, George, The Odd Women.
- Oliphant, Margaret. "The Open Door" and "The Portrait."
- Dixon, Ella Hepworth, The Story of a Modern Woman.
- Morris, William, News from Nowhere.
- Doyle, Arthur Conan (Sherlock Holmes). A Study in Scarlet.
Handouts will be provided for selections by Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Cooper and Ernest Jones. I will also provide copies of critical readings on Victorian fiction.
Course Requirements:
- contributions to class discussion: please read the assignment before class and come prepared to ask questions and comment on unusual features of the text.
- From time to time, I will ask students to give a brief class presentation on an author's life, and/or to prepare responses and questions for our readings.
- journal/reading responses: please prepare 6 reading responses, the equivalent of two double-spaced typed pages each, to be posted on Icon so that your fellow students may read them. Three of your responses should be on course readings, and three on literary criticism
about Victorian works of fiction. For this latter, I will give you a short bibliography of suggested readings and/or provide copies.
- In addition to posting these responses to the class web site, you will be asked to write a six page critical/research paper, and a six page final take-home essay/examination.
Your critical/research paper must be based on research in the biographies, book-length critical studies, and critical articles on the author you have chosen (that is, you cannot merely use web-page citations). It is due March 14th, 2008; you will be asked to hand in an bibliography/outline/draft in early March.
- The final essay/take-home exam will be a comparative critical discussion of the works of two or more authors you have read during the course.
Your final presentations will be during the last week of classes, but the final draft of your essay is due May 16th, 2008.