Postgraduate Course: Gender, Nation and the Novel 1790-1830 (Level 11) (ENLI11157)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course addresses the politics of the novel at a crucial stage in its development, namely the four decades after the French Revolution in 1789, culminating in the work of Jane Austen and Walter Scott. This is the period in which the Enlightenment assumption of a universal human nature, which was seen as underlying the ideology of radicalism in France, was countered by reactionary discourses of tradition, nation, and culture. The novel was perhaps the most important site of the debate between the two, and in the literary culture of the United Kingdom, two (overlapping) groups had a very particular stake in that debate: women writers, and writers from the minor nations of the UK, Ireland and Scotland. In both cases, the politically marginal had gained a limited cultural authority from Enlightenment values, and now had to reposition themselves within the new ideological situation. In doing so, women novelists, and writers from Scotland and Ireland, transformed the scope and style of the novel as a genre. That process is the main focus of this course.
*This course is taught jointly with undergraduate students and consequently postgraduate places are limited |
| Course description |
Week 1 Introduction: Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft
Week 2 The ¿Jacobin Novel¿: Mary Hays, A Victim of Prejudice (1799)
Week 3 The ¿Anti-Jacobin Novel¿: Elizabeth Hamilton, Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800)
Week 4 Romantic Nationalism: Sydney Owenson, The Wild Irish Girl (1806)
Week 5 Political Economies: Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent (1800) and Ennui (1809) Penguin
Week 6 The Domestic Novel: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Week 7 Nation and Empire: Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814) Penguin
Week 8 ESSAY COMPLETION WEEK
Week 9 The Historical Novel: Walter Scott, Waverley (1814)
Week 10 The National Romance: Walter Scott, Guy Mannering (1815) Penguin
Week 11 Conclusions: James Hogg, The Three Perils of Woman (1823) Edinburgh University Press
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
| Students will acquire a broad overview of fiction in English in this period, and a detailed knowledge of the politics of its production and reception; a solid grounding in contemporary critical approaches to the history of the novel in this period, especially those highlighting gender; and further develop their skills in autonomous research, research presentation, seminar discussion and essay writing.
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Reading List
Primary Texts
Extracts from Burke, Paine and Wollstonecraft, and other secondary materials will be made available by the seminar leader. A Victim of Prejudice, Memoirs of Modern Philosophers, and Pride and Prejudice should be bought in the Broadview editions; The Wild Irish Girl and Waverley in Oxford World¿s Classics; Mansfield Park and Guy Mannering in Penguin; and The Three Perils of Woman is available in paperback from Edinburgh University Press.
Selected Secondary Reading
Butler, Marilyn. Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries. Oxford: OUP, 1981. Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992.
Duncan, Ian. Modern Romance and Transformations of the Novel: The Gothic, Scott, Dickens. Cambridge: CUP, 1992.
Ferris, Ina. The Romantic National Tale and the Question of Ireland. Cambridge: CUP, 2002.
Gallagher, Catherine. Nobody¿s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Woman Writers in the Marketplace, 1670¿1820. Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1994. Johnson, Claudia. Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
---. (1995) Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s. A Study of Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, and Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kelly, Gary. English Fiction of the Romantic Period, 1789¿1830. London: Longman, 1989.
---. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790¿1827. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Klancher, Jon. The Making of English Reading Audiences 1790-1832. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987 .
Lynch, Deirdre. ¿Nationalizing Women and Domesticating Fiction: Edmund Burke and the Genres of Englishness.¿ Wordsworth Circle 25.1 (Winter 1994): 45¿49. McMaster, Graham. Scott and Society. Cambridge: CUP, 1981. Siskin, Clifford. The Work of Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1700¿1830. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998.
Trumpener, Katie. Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997.
Watson, Nicola. Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790¿1825: Intercepted Letters, Interrupted Seductions. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Special Arrangements |
Jointly taught with ENLI10299 |
| Keywords | GNatN |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Robert Irvine
Tel: (0131 6)50 3605
Email: R.P.Irvine@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Gordon Littlejohn
Tel: (0131 6)50 3782
Email: Gordon.Littlejohn@ed.ac.uk |
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