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In this module, we shall be exploring the mode of writing labelled realism from two angles: The Victorian realist novel in its contexts on the one hand (“Realism and the Victorian Novel”), and the question of how realism lives on, is re-negotiated and informs British literature after 1945 up to the present (“Negotiations of Realism in Fiction since 1945”) on the other hand. While the two seminars are designed in tandem, each is meant to also work on its own.
With regard to the Victorian period, the ‘realist novel’ and the ‘Victorian novel’ are frequently used interchangeably, so close is the connection. The self-conscious sense of modernity and concern with temporality, that is, the experience of “a radically altered spatial and temporal environment” (Altick) in this period, the changes of intellectual, political and social landscapes, too – all these are issues that the Victorian novel addresses, and it does so self-consciously, reflecting upon the appropriate mode of writing, on how to “give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in [the author’s or narrator’s] mind” (G. Eliot).
Moodle: Mary Anne Evans |
