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Instructors: Natasha Audrey Anderson
Event type:
online: Practice class
Displayed in timetable as:
05.874.211
Hours per week:
2
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 45
Registration group: ELC 211
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Requirements / organisational issues:
This class requires active oral and written participation, including responses to reading assignments, class discussions, and a short multimedia presentation (e.g. PowerPoint).
Course Outcomes:
- Investigate the life and literature of Charlotte Brontë, Henry James, and Thomas Hardy within a transnational context.
- Understand Victorian conceptualizations of mobility by studying representations of travelling heroines in Villette, The Portrait of a Lady, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
- Explore nineteenth-century literary representations of travel’s influence on education, economic independence, self-awareness, as well as bodily and mental health.
- Analyze the reciprocal exchange between changes in transportation technology, social integration of transnational exchanges, and the centrality of mobility in the Victorian novel through close reading, viewing of digital resources, and personal reflection.
Contents:
From ambling across meadows to riding on horseback, from strolling through city streets to travelling by train—in all its diverse realizations, mobility plays a central role in the Victorian novel. Due to major advances in transportation and communication technologies during this era in British society, the promises and perils of travel move to the foreground in nineteenth-century fiction. This course illuminates the way movement shapes the stories of female protagonists via close readings of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. As the nineteenth century progresses, the range of the itinerant heroines’ travels continuously expand from daily pedestrian excursions to journeys between countries by railroad to marine expeditions across the globe.
While the trajectories of the protagonists’ voyages in these three novels vary from the local level of rural England to the transnational extent of European metropolises, deep-reaching alterations in their lives consistently correspond with changes in location. A special point of interest in this course is the comparison of similarities and differences between the way Charlotte Brontë, Henry James, and Thomas Hardy explore interpersonal struggles in conjunction with the changing settings of the story. By examining how the cast of characters confront endangerment, independence, and self-discovery via travel, students will investigate how mobility in the Victorian novel reflects sociocultural trends in the nineteenth century and offers both change and consistency for the itinerant heroines.
Weekly readings, available the LMS-platform, are required for this class.
Recommended reading list:
Readings for this course include scholarly articles, digital resources, and excerpts from the following books, available via the LMS-platform:
https://lms.uni-mainz.de/moodle/login/index.php
Additional information:
At the conclusion of this course, students can:
- Interpret and discuss the representations of travel and literary-historical context of Villette, The Portrait of a Lady, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles in an informed and reflective manner.
- Investigate and analyze connections between mobility, economic independence, and health in the Victorian novel.
- Evaluate and present developments in literary depictions of travelling heroines over the course of the nineteenth century.
Digital teaching:
We are going to use the LMS-platform JGU Mainz to manage our class online. To join the digital class, please go to: https://lms.uni-mainz.de/moodle/login/index.php
Please log in using your JGU Uni Mainz Account > user name + password.
Go to: Startseite > Kursbereiche > curricular > SoSe 2021 > Kurse suchen > Cultural Studies IV - English Literature and Culture: Independent and Itinerant: Travelling Heroines in the Victorian Novel
For general information on digital instruction at JGU Mainz, please visit:
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