Prof. Fay         EN466A 19th-Century Literature and Material Culture           MWF 10:30   

Spring 06                                                                                                  

                                                                         

Office: W-6-87; 287-6715 (leave message)

elizabeth.fay@umb.edu

Office Hours:   MW 12:30-2pm

 

 

Course Description:

We will be encountering a period of transition, excitement, frustration, and great change in Great Britain during the years that encompass the end of the Age of Enlightenment,  the Romantic Period, and the beginning of the Victorian Age. Our major goal will be to familiarize ourselves with the culture of the times and the literature that expresses its dreams and failures. Our study of a selection of novels, poetry and prose of the period by writers such as Fanny Burney, Charles Lamb, Jane Austen, William Hazlitt, and Thomas De Quincey will be augmented by the material culture that is both reflected in these works and that helped provide their imaginative ground. We will be examining the relationship between the production of literature and the following: fashion, food practices, exhibitions and games, and monthlies and the press. Our aim is to make the culture of this increasingly industrialized period more imaginatively and tangibly available in order to understand its importance for the period’s literary art.

 

Texts:

Pope, Rape of the Lock, Bedford edition.

Fanny Burney, The Witlings and The Woman Hater, ed. by Peter Sabor & Geoffrey Sill

(Broadview Press), 2002  1551113783  

Jane Austen, Emma, ed. by Alistair Duckworth (Bedford/St. Martins),  0-312-20757-3

Raymond Williams, Sociology of Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1995ed),  0-

226-89921-7

William Hazlitt, Selected Writings (Oxford UP), 1999 pb, 0192838008

Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (Oxford UP, 1998),

0192836544

Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journals, ed Pamela Woof (Oxford UP, 2002),

 0192840622

Venetia Murray, An Elegant Madness (Penguin 2000), 0140282963

 

Ereserve Readings:

Our course # is 466 and our course password is cheer. To access the ereserve readings, go to the Healey Library website (http://www.lib.umb.edu/), click on Ereserves at the 3rd red button (Electronic Resources), click on the first option (Electronic Reserves), and enter the course # in the long blank space:

Find Course Reserves Pages where:

 

 

At the next screen, click on the first box with our course number, and at the next screen enter our password, cheer, and click “accept.” Each reading is presented in page format heading up—print out you own copy, or if reading on screen, rotate for easier reading by clicking the last usable icon in your menu bar (looks like 2 pages with an arrow). 

 

Library Reserves:

These books are on regular reserve for presentations and research for paper assignments. They are on 48 hr loan, but if you are using a book several people want, please Xerox what you need and return the book quickly.

 

Class Procedure:

This is a discussion-heavy course, and will depend on your careful reading of assigned materials, your participation in class, and your engagement with oral presentations by classmates. To aid your understanding of reading assignments, you will keep a reading notebook in which you record your response, thoughts, connections for each reading assignment (see notebook handout for entry details). There should be 3 entries per week

 

Course Assignments:

Your course grade will consist of:

15% for participation in class discussion, including the willingness to contribute, as well

as your preparation of and engagement with the readings, and any written or

research assignments. Surprise reading quizzes may be given if preparation for class

discussion seems inadequate.

25% for a reading notebook, kept weekly and collected several times during the semester. Bring these to class every time. (See notebook handout.)

            15% for a presentation based on an assigned reading; presentation date will depend on the text you sign up for, and a short paper (3-4 pp) based on your presentation, due one week later.

            15% for a short paper (4-5) on Emma (see assignment handout).

            30 % for the research paper (10pp.), combining library research with analysis of one or more literary texts from our reading this semester. This paper can be related to texts you prepared for your oral presentation and can use materials you engaged with there, or can develop a comparison of one or more texts. It should reflect the kind of work we will be doing all semester—not a historical survey or a thematic project, but rather focusing on a topic that depends on analyzing a text(s), placing it in its historical or literary context, and relating your interpretation to what other critics have had to say about this work.

 

Presentations:

Your report should be informational, helping the class to understand what you have read.  You can also bring in aspects of Romantic period culture. Your goal is to help us understand how to apply this reading to the primary text(s) we are reading, and to provide some guide for class discussion for that class meeting.

We will sign up for presentations so that each student presents the information they have researched from assigned readings. Presentations should take at least 10 min. and can be longer; they should lead into a wide-ranging class discussion, and can include handouts or visual materials. Presenters should take note of interesting points the class makes in the following discussion to help them in preparing their presentation as a short paper (3-4 pp), due one week later. This paper should integrate textual analysis of a literary text (one or more scenes of a novel; a short poem or scenes from a long, narrative poem; an essay; one or more scenes from a play) with the secondary source of the presentation. That is, the critical source should guide your interpretation of the literary text, whether or not you take issue with it or with any points it makes. Additional critical resources may be used, but only to supplement the principal one. MLA citation style should be used (available at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Style.html --choose MLA--be patient, the pdf pages take a while to come up).

 

Course Policies: Attendance counts; according to university policy, any absences over 6 missed classes affects your final grade, with 3 lates of 15 min. or more equaling one absence. Papers are due on the date specified; late papers may be emailed but a hardcopy must also be submitted; lateness will reduce your grade for each day missed. What I am looking for is your analysis of the works and the extent to which you build on class discussion to develop your own ideas of how to best understand some aspect of the text in relation to the paper assignment. Each paper needs an organizing thesis, which should be clearly stated and well-thought out. My comments will be both reflective and corrective; do not assume that a lot of comments means you are not doing well, since my comments are always aimed at pushing you further.

 

            Anyone having special medical or family emergencies that will result in more than 6 absences should discuss your situation with me in advance.

            Anyone needing assistance for special learning requirements should notify me so that we can make the necessary arrangements.

            All students will be held to the University’s rules for academic honesty, including penalties for plagiarism (cheating on exams and the use of unattributed sources in papers).

Reading Assignments:

Presentation Paper is due one week from presentation date

Emma paper due 3/31

Term Paper is due 5/12 in class

 *= textbook

P ( ) =presentation (I’ve created a few more presentation topics than we may need so that you have a range to choose from—there are more here than we will cover)

 

1 .  Introduction to Material Culture

1/23    Introduction

1/25    Judy Attfield, Wild Things

               Ereserve, ch 2 “The Meaning of Things,” pp. 45-74

1/27   *Venetia Murray, An Elegant Madness, pp.1-23

          Lecture on Roy Porter, London, a social history, Reg. Reserve, pp. 131-84

 

1/30   *Raymond Williams, The Sociology of Culture, Intro, pp 9-56

2/1    *Ch 5-6, “Identifications” and “Forms,” pp. 119-180

2/3     Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption

                EReserve, “The Making of Modern Consumption,” pp. 3-30

 

 

2.    Consumables 

2/6    *Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock, first1/2

2/8    a. *Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock, second 1/2

P      (McKendrick, Neil, Plumb, J.H., and Brewer, John, eds. The Birth of a

   Consumer Society Reg. Reserve: “Josiah Wedgwood,” pp. 98-144)

2/10  a. *“A Discourse on Coffee,” and on snuffboxes, from appendices to Rape of the

   Lock, pp. 352-63..

         b. Charles Lamb, “Old China” at Project Guttenberg

(http://gutenberg.net/1/0/3/4/10343/10343.txt) or at

(http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia2/china.htm) and on Reg. Reserve (The

   Essays of Elia)

P      (Beth Kowaleski Wallace, Consuming Subjects

   Reg. Reserve: “The Tea Table,” pp. 19-72  (chapters: “Tea,” “Sugar,” “China”) P      (Timothy Morton, The Poetics of Spice Reg Reserve: PR408.S665 M67 2000

               “The confection of spice,” and “Blood sugar”)

2/13   a. *Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater first 1/2

          b. *Venetia Murray, An Elegant Madness, “Taverns” pp. 157-224.

P       (Mui and Mui, eds. William Melrose in China 1845-1855: The Letters of a Scottish

            Tea Merchant,  HD9198.C5 M45 1973)

P       (Robert Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London, DA682.A4 1967)

P       (Dorothy Davis, A History of Shopping, HF5349.G7D3.1966, chps 8-9)

2/15   a. Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater first 1/2

P       (Barry Milligan, Pleasures and Pains: Opium and the Orient in 19th-C British

            Culture. PR468.O6 M55 1995)

 

 

3.  Fashion and Shopping

2/17   a. *Jane Austen, Emma, pp.  23-68 (if you have another edition, divide the # of pages by 8—in this edition we are reading approx. 45 pages for each class meeting)

          b. *Venetia Murray, An Elegant Madness, pp. 24-112.

2/20   President’s Day

2/22   a. *Emma, pp. 69-114

          b. *Joseph Addison, et al, “Unhoop the Fair Sex,” etc, in our Rape of the Lock

    edition, pp. 326-344.

2/24   a. *Emma, pp. 115-60

          b. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, ed. Edward Copeland

                 EReserve, “Money,” pp. 131-48.

P        (Park Honan, Jane Austen, Her Life/ PR4036 .H66 1988, Reserve)

2/27   a. *Emma, pp. 161-206

          b. Beth Kowaleski Wallace, Consuming Subjects

         Ereserve: “Shopping,” pp. 73-98.

3/1     a.  *Emma, pp. 207-257

P        b. McKendrick, Neil, Plumb, J.H., and Brewer, John, eds. The Birth of a

Consumer Society Reg. Reserve: “The Commercialization of Fashion,” 34-98.)

3/3     a. *Emma, pp. 258-302

            (Video clips of Emma and Sense and Sensibility.)

3/6      a. *Emma, pp. 303-348

b. Fashion Websites:

        (1) 18th-C  Fashion (http://www.costumegallery.com/1700.html),

        (2) Regency Fashion (http://locutus.ucr.edu/~cathy/reg3.html), 

        (3) Godey’s Lady’s Book (http://www.history.rochester.edu/godeys/)

P         (Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption, Reg. Reserve, “Clothing as

         Language,”  57-70.)

P          (Woodruff Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, from ch.

         2, “Gentility,” pp. 31-62.)

3/8      a. *Emma, pp. 349-381 (end)

           b. Mui and Mui, “’Petty’ Shopkeepers,” pp, 201-220.

3/10    a. *Emma, Introduction pp. 3-19

           b. Regency Life (view select links on coaches, Regency life, postal history):         

(http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~awoodley/Regency.html#reggen)

3/11-19    Spring Break

3/20     a. *Fanny Burney, The Witlings, Acts I and II

3/22     a. *Fanny Burney, The Witlings, Acts III and IV

b. Regency Taste (http://www.fashion-era.com/regency_taste.htm )

P          (Deirdre Lynch, “Counter Publics: Shopping and Women’s Sociability,” in

                        Romantic Sociability, eds. Gillian Russell and Clara Tuite, Reserve, pp.

211-36.)

 

 

4. Manners

3/24     a. *Fanny Burney, The Witlings, Acts IV (con’t) and V

            ( Deirdre Lynch, The Economy of Character, Reg. Reserve, pp. 23-163

P                      1) “Fleshing Out Characters”

P                      2) “Fictions of Social Circulation, 1742-1782”

P                     3) “ ‘Round’ Characters and Romantic-Period Reading Relations”)

3/27     a. *William Hazlitt, Selected Writings, “English Characteristics” 

            b. Marjorie Morgan, Manners, morals, and class in England, 1774-1858

                                    Ereserve: “Courtesy, Conduct and Etiquette,” pp. 8-31.

P          (The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, ed. Edward Copeland

                                    Reg. Reserve, “Class,” pp. 115-30.)

3/29     a. *William Hazlitt, Selected Writings, “On Public Opinion,” and “On Fashion”

b. Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter, Ereserve, “Gentility,” pp.

13-38.

            c. *Venetia Murray, An Elegant Madness, pp. 245-65

P          (Beth Fowkes Tobin, “”Aiding Impoverished Gentlewomen,” in Emma,

pp. 473-87.)

 

3/31     a.  Lord Byron, “The Blues” (http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-Blues-P90.html) and (http://www.faculty.umb.edu/elizabeth_fay/byblues.html)

            b. The Fly, editorial (handout)

            Short Papers due

4/3       a. Trial of Sir Patrick Blake (EReserve)

 P         (Claudia Johnson, “Not at all what a man should be,” in Emma, appendices,

441-55.)

 P         (Paul Delaney, “A Sort of Notch in the Donwell Estate,” in Emma,508-23)

           

 

5.  The Literary Marketplace

4/5       a.  *Raymond Williams, the Sociology of Culture, “Reproductions,” pp. 181-205

P          (Marjorie Morgan, Manners, morals, and class in England, 1774-1858

                       Reg. Reserve: “The Problem of Influence,” pp. 32-58)

4/7       a. Charles Lamb, “Newspapers Thirty-Five Years Ago” at Project Guttenberg

(http://gutenberg.net/1/0/3/4/10343/10343.txt) and on Reg. Reserve (The

Essays of Elia)

  b. *William Hazlitt, Selected Writings, “Illustrations of the Times Newspaper”

4/10       a. Criminal Conversations (Trial of Charles Wyndham, EReserve)

              b. Lady Charlotte Bury, The Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting, selections:

    (http://www.unl.edu/Corvey/html/Etexts/HamiltonAnne/BurySelections.htm)   

4/12       a. Stuart Curran, “The ‘I’ Altered,” in Romanticism and Feminism, ed Anne K.

Mellor Ereserve

P            (Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader, Reg. Reserve Z1003 .A57)

P            (Alan Richardson, Literature, Education and Romanticism, Reg. Reserve PR457

               .R456 1994)

4/14       a. Keepsake Annuals: The Forget Me Not     (http://www.orgs.muohio.edu/anthologies/FMN/)

  b. Edward Copeland, Women Writing about Money, ch 3, pp. 261-87, 

     EReserve

P          (The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, ed. Edward Copeland

                        Reg. Reserve, “The Professional Woman Writer,” pp. 12-31.)

4/17     Patriots’ Day

 

 

6. Entertainment and Leisure

4/19     *Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journals

4/21     a.*The Grasmere Journals

b. A Romantic Natural History:

(http://www.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/romnat1.htm)

P          (McKendrick, Neil, Plumb, J.H., and Brewer, John, eds. The Birth of a

Consumer Society Reg. Reserve: Ch 6-7 on “Leisure” and “Children,” pp.

265-315.

4/24     a.*William Hazlitt, Selected Writings, “The Fight,” and “The Indian Jugglers”

            b. Card Games (http://www.bcvc.net/faro/;

http://www.davidparlett.co.uk/histocs/quadrill.html;

                        http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Cribbage.htm)

4/26     a. John Keats, “Ode on Melancholy”

(http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1130.htm)

b. Regency recipes (view select links on eating and cooking): (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~awoodley/Regency.html#reggen)

P          ( J. H. Plumb. Georgian Delights, Reserve, esp. chapter on Tea-Gardens)

4/28     a. *William Hazlitt, Selected Writings, (1)“Shakespeare” ,(2) “Edmund Kean”, 

(3)“Macbeth,” (4) “Brummelliana,”  

5/1       a. *William Hazlitt, Selected Writings, (1)”Fragments on Art,”

(2)“On the Elgin Marbles,” and (3) “Hogarth”

P          ( Richard Altick, The Shows of London, T395.5.G7 A45)

P          ( John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the

Eighteenth Century, (“Connoisseurs and Artists,” Reg reserve DA485 .B74 1997)

5/3       Course Evaluations

5/5       a. John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1129.html)

P          ( Oliver Millar, Later Georgian Pictures,  ND 466.M5) and

( Richard D. Altick, Paintings from books, PR408.A68 A48 1985 —both Reg reserve)

5/8       a. Covent Garden: (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~awoodley/illus/quad.html)

            b. Mary Favret, “A Home for Art,” pp. 59-82, EReserve

5/10     Tea Party; Final Papers Due in class.