/Advancement in Victorian Lit/ will examine the themes of progress, motion, and self-improvement in British literary work of the 19th century. Though we’ll focus on the novel as a form (and as a forum for the values of social mobility), we’ll also read short stories, correspondence, sermons, and occasional essays in order to recreate the national mood of an empire in which everything seemed possible: poverty eradicated, education for all, railroads creating an early information superhighway.

Amidst breakneck change, and blinding speed, Victorian fiction laid out a national character and an aesthetic charter that, in some sense, still holds; when most people today think of a novel, they’re thinking of the novel that the Victorians invented.

*Student Learning Goals*

Throughout the quarter, we will come to know some things about the art
of writing fiction--how stories are built, what they can do, why they
might matter-- and some other things about the art of reading it.
Furthermore, we will build a familiarity with the particularities of our
elected period: what life was like (and thereby what art was like) in in
Britain under Queen Victoria, and find en route some keys to unlocking
fiction as a genre whose chief (though not sole) benefit is delight.
Importantly, we’ll also learn to engage written texts critically: to
think forcefully, and to write well.
**
*General Method of Instruction*

This course’s approach to mastery is pluriform. We’ll have lectures,
site-visits, dramatic readings, guest speakers and frequent (compelling)
class-discussion, for which you are expected to prepare and in which you
are required to participate. No spectators.

*Recommended Preparation*

Reading long passages of fiction can be taxing and time-consuming, and
active participation in class discussion can require inordinate
preparation. For those of you who are slower readers (like me) I
recommend getting the books as soon as you can, and starting all of
them. It will be better for you to have read the first 5 chapters of
each text, rather than completing one of them. Start early; read
carefully; annotate freely.

*Class Assignments and Grading*

Engagement is the first assignment, and reading, the second. Beyond
that, expect (3) short papers (4-5 pgs.) which will undergo significant
revision in response to peer and instructor feedback, in accordance with
the university’s “W” requirement, a weekly reading journal, and an
in-class presentation.

*Texts*

Jude the Obscureby Thomas Hardy
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Selected Writingsby John Ruskin
Selected Letters of Charlotte Bronteed. Margaret Smith

Get books online: http://astore.amazon.com/classreadings-20
Or at UW Bookstore