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MEG-03: British Novel

By Dr. Malathy A.   |   Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi
Learners enrolled: 298
The novel as a popular literary form took shape in Britain in the eighteenth century.  Many reasons have been put forward for the growth of the novel in Britain during this period. These include the improvements in printing technology, the growing market for  books, and the emergence of a newly literate middle class. Book clubs and circulating libraries also helped in the popularity of the new literary form.

The eighteenth century produced  prominent English novelists such as Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Tobias Smollett.  However, it was in the nineteenth century that the English novel in its classical form reached its height, at the hands  of writers like Jane Austen, W.M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. Among some of the prominent twentieth century British novelists are E. M. Forster, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Joseph Conrad. This course introduces the learner to some of the finest writings of these novelists.

A study of this course will help the learner gain a sense of the development of the British novel from its beginnings in the eighteenth century till the later decades of the twentieth century. Apart from providing a broad overview of the great tradition of the British novel, the course takes up selected novels for close reading and detailed study.

The novels selected for detailed analysis are Tom Jones (Henry Fielding); Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen); Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte); Great Expectations (Charles Dickens); Middlemarch (George Eliot);  Heart of Darkness  (Joseph Conrad); A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man (James Joyce); A Passage to India (E. M. Forster) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie   (Muriel Spark). The course also includes readings of these novels from different critical perspectives such as the feminist, deconstructionist, new historicist, and the post-colonial.

Summary
Course Status : Completed
Course Type : Core
Language for course content : English
Duration : 24 weeks
Category :
  • Language
Credit Points : 8
Level : Postgraduate
Start Date : 01 Jan 2024
End Date : 30 Apr 2024
Enrollment Ends : 29 Feb 2024
Exam Date : 19 May 2024 IST
Shift :

Shift-II

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.


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Course layout

Weeks

                                              Topics

Week-1

The Rise of the Novel

Week-2

An Introduction to Henry Fielding

Week-3

Reading Tom Jones: Characters and Characterisation

Week-4

Tom Jones: Major Themes and Critical Perspectives

Week-5

An Introduction to Jane Austen

Week-6

Pride and Prejudice: Characters and Narrative Techniques

Pride and Prejudice: Major Themes and Critical Perspectives

Week-7

An Introduction to Emily Bronte

Week-8

Wuthering Heights: Themes and Narrative Techniques

Wuthering Heights: Major Characters and Critical Perspectives

Week-9

An Introduction to Charles Dickens

Week-10

Great Expectations: Themes of Self-Improvement, Crime and Respectability

Week-11

Reading Great Expectations: Characters and the ‘Fairytale Plot’

Week-12

An Introduction to George Eliot

Week-13

Reading Middlemarch: Themes, Characters, Techniques

Week-14

Middlemarch: Philosophical Underpinnings and Perspectives

Week-15

An Introduction to Joseph Conrad 

Week-16

Reading Heart of Darkness : Major Themes

Week-17

Heart of Darkness: Literary Analysis

Week-18

An Introduction to James Joyce

Week-19

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Point of View and Technique

Week-20

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Themes and Critical Perspectives

Week-21

An Introduction to E. M. Forster

Week-22

Approaches to the Novel  A Passage to India

Week-23

An Introduction to Muriel Spark 

Week-24

Reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 


Books and references

  1. Acheson and Ross. The Contemporary British Novel. Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

  2. Kasmer, Lisa. British Women Writing History, 1760 – 1830.Farleigh Dickinson University Press 2013.

  3. Hosmer, Robert. Ed. Contemporary British Women Writers: Texts and Strategies. Macmillan, 1993.

  4. Leavis, F.R. The Great Tradition. Chatto and Windus, 1948.

  5. Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology. Bloomsbury, 1991.

  6. Eagleton, Terry. The English Novel: an Introduction.  Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

  7. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Penguin, 1963.

  8. Stevenson, J. The Real History of Tom Jones. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

  9. Hardy, Barbara. A Reading of Jane Austen. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000.

  10. Miles, Rosalind. The Female Form: Women Writers and the Conquest of the Novel.  Routledge, 1987.

  11. Spark, Muriel. The Essence of the Brontes. London: Peter Owen, 1993.

  12. Cranny-Francis, Anne. Feminist Fiction: Feminist Uses of Generic Fiction. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990.

  13. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination. Yale University Press, 1979.

  14. Williams, Raymond. The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence. Paladin, 1974.

  15. Peck, John. Ed. Middlemarch (New Casebooks) 1992.

  16. Hardy, Barbara. Ed. Middlemarch: Critical Approaches to the Novel. London: Athlone Press, 1967.

  17. Jameson, Frederick. The Political Unconscious.  Cornell University Press, 1981.

  18. Spinks, Lee. James Joyce: A Critical Guide. Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

  19. Gardner, Philip. E. M. Forster. Taylor and Francis, 1997.

  20. Gardiner, M and Wiley Maley. The Edinburgh Companion to Muriel Spark. Edinburgh University Press, 2010.

Instructor bio

Dr. Malathy A.

Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi

Dr. Malathy A. (Assistant Professor, Selection Grade) joined IGNOU in 2005 and has been involved with language editing of study material, and development and co-ordination of courses of BA (General), BA (Hons.) and Post Graduate Diploma in Book Publishing. A post graduate from the University of Kerala, 

Dr. Malathy A. holds an MPhil in D. H. Lawrence studies from the University of Nottingham, UK, and a PhD in Australian fiction from JNU, New Delhi.  Her research focuses on possibilities of re-interpreting traditional Indian critical concepts for contemporary critical discourse. She is also interested in eco-critical approaches to literary texts to consider the intersections between the human and the non-human worlds. She has presented papers at national and international conferences and published papers on these themes.



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