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LIT303 The English Novel from Austen to Lawrence (8)

Abstract

Through study and discussion of five novels this subject re-examines the evolution of what has been called 'the great tradition' in English fiction. Rather than restrict itself to an 'ism', or to a historical period, the course assumes that the novel in English has something of a life of its own, which manifests itself in the way it responds to the historical or aesthetic context at any given time. The scope is broad, but there are enough considerations to keep the texts in focus: social issues in general and women's emancipation in particular; children and 'the innocent' in post-Romantic literature: parents and the lack of them in post-Romantic literature; and, above all perhaps, the sense each of these highly self-aware novelists had of what their predecessors had attempted and achieved, and what was left still to be done in these and other spheres of interest.

+ Subject Availability Modes and Location

Session 1
DistanceWagga Wagga Campus
Continuing students should consult the SAL for current offering details: LIT303
Where differences exist between the Handbook and the SAL, the SAL should be taken as containing the correct subject offering details.

Subject information

Duration Grading System School:
One sessionHD/FLSchool of Humanities and Social Sciences

Assumed Knowledge

LIT1%%

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this subject, students should:
Have an accurate critical and literary-historical understanding of the English novel between about 1800 and 1915;
Be able to examine the 'traditional' relationship between these novelists (in chronological progression), and between them and their contemporaries;
Have reached a fuller understanding of what so-called 'realist' fiction involves, and what these novelists understood by it;
Be able to evaluate the nineteenth-century novel's candidacy for literary and cultural centrality in English literature between the Romantic and Modernist eras.

Syllabus

The subject will cover the following topics:
1. Intro.; 2 and 3. Northanger Abbey; 4 and 5. Oliver Twist; 6 and 7. The Mill on the Floss; 8 and 9. The Bostonians; 10 and 11. The Rainbow; 12. Conclusion.

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The information contained in the 2016 CSU Handbook was accurate at the date of publication: 06 September 2016. The University reserves the right to vary the information at any time without notice.