Professor Claudia Klaver                                      427 Hall of Languages

Department of English                                                  Phone: x2074

Syracuse University                                                            email: ccklaver@syr.edu

                                                                                            Office hours: Tuesday 2:30-4:00,

                                                                                                 Thursday 11:00-12:00, and by appt.

 

ENG 747:

Nineteenth-Century Capitalism and the Victorian Novel

 

Course description:

 

This course will examine the ways in which the Victorian novel negotiates its relationship to the imperial-industrial capitalist economics that were newly dominant in nineteenth-century Britain.  The course will begin by looking at texts that theorize and popularize political economy as the central discursive articulation of capitalist economics and ideology in the nineteenth century.   These texts are some of the “original” texts of what is now seen at the (social) “science” of economics.  As such , they function both as template for and counterdiscourse to many of the “literary” engagements with capitalist economics that we will explore for the bulk of the semester.      

 

In addition to the contemporary context of nineteenth-century economic theory, we will read the novels for the course in conjunction with more recent discussions of various aspects of capitalist economics, of capitalist ideology, and of  the relationship between capitalism and Victorian fiction.  These readings will draw on a number of contemporary critical theories, including various forms of Marxism, psychoanalysis, Foucauldianism, postcolonial theory, and gender theory.   The aim of these readings will be to help us explore the multiple ways in which the project and popularity of the nineteenth-century novel drew upon, reinforced, and contested fundamental impulses in the development of a capitalist economy, state, and society.  The readings will give particular attention to the intersection of the Victorian novel with class formation, gendered identities, imperialism, financial speculation, consumerism and advertising.

 


Required texts:

 

Charlote Bronte, Jane Eyre (Broadview Edition)

Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (Oxford UP)

George Eliot, Silas Marner (Oxford UP)

Wilkie Collins, No Name (Oxford UP)

Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (Oxford UP)

Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now (Oxford UP)

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875

(all available at Follett Orange Bookstore in the Marshall Square Mall)

 

Photocopied course packet, parts 1 & 2

(available at Campus Copies in the Marshall Square Mall)

 

Schedule of course readings and discussions:

 

Aug. 27                  Course introduction, background, and overview

 

Sept. 3              Nineteenth-century economic theory and economic history

                              Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, sels. (cp)

                              Thomas Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population, sels. (cp)

                              David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy, sels. (cp)

                              J. S. Mill, “On the Definition of Political Economy” (cp)

                              Claudia Klaver, “Ricardian Economics: Rhetoric and the Form of Science in

                                    Early 19th-Century Political Economy” (cp)

                              Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, chs. 2-3

                 

Sept. 10            Capitalism and domestic ideology

                              Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, ed. Richard Nemesvari (Broadview)

                              Bronte, Appendices C & D

                        Mary Poovey,  “Introduction” and “The Anathematized Race: The Governess

and Jane Eyre” in Uneven Developments (cp)

Davidoff and Hall, “The Domestic Ideology of the 1830s and 1840s” and “’The

Hidden Investment’: Women and the Enterprise” in Family Fortunes

(cp)

 

Sept. 17                  Gender and imperialism

                                       Bronte, cont.

                                       Bronte, Appendices E & F

                                       Gayatri Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” (cp)

                                       Jenny Sharpe, “Jane Eyre and the Civilizing Mission” in Allegories of Empire

                                          (cp)

                                       Hobsbawm, chs. 5 & 7

 

Sept. 24                  The Condition of England Question I

                                    Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, Chs. 1-28

                        Hobsbawm, ch. 12

                        Fredric Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, sels. (cp)

Ed. Kate Flint, “The Industrial North and Midlands” in The Victorian Novelist:

Social Problems and Social Change (cp)

                       

Oct. 1                  The Condition of England Question II

                        Gaskell, cont., concl., Chs. 29-52

                              Gordon Bigelow, “Toward a Social Theory of Wealth: Three Novels by

                                    Elizabeth Gaskell” (cp)

                              Catherine Gallagher, in The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction (cp)

                        Dorice Williams Elliot, “North and South and the Lady Visitor” in The Angel Out

of the House (cp)

 

Oct. 8               Money and commodity fetishism

                              George Eliot, Silas Marner

                              Karl Marx, Captial, Vol. 1, sels. (from Marx-Engels Reader and Capital) (cp)

                              Robert H. Patterson, “Gold and Social Politics” (from Poovey, ed.,  The

                                    Financial System in Nineteenth-Century Britain) (cp)

                              Henry Sidgwick, “What Is Money?” (Poovey) (cp)

 

Oct. 15             The economics of popular fiction

                              Wilkie Collins, No Name

                              Ronald Thomas, “Wilkie Collins and Sensation Fiction” (cp)

                              Deborah Wynne,  in “Tantalizing Portions: Serialized Sensation Novels and

                                    Family Magazines” and “Wilkie Collins’s No Name in All the Year

                                    Round” in Sensation Fiction and the Victorian Family Magazine (cp)

                              Richard D. Altick, “Publishing” in A Companion to Victorian Literature and

                                    Culture (cp)

 

Oct. 22             Money and Materiality

                              Collins, cont.

                              Phillip O’Neill, “No Name” in Wilkie Collins: Women, Property, and Propriety

                                    (cp)

                              Daniel Hack, “No Name and the Begging Letter Writer” (handout)

 

Oct. 29             Professionalism, authorship, and copyright

                              Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, Bk.1 – Bk. 2, ch. 5

                              Cathy Schuman, “’In the Way of School’: Dickens OMF” in Pedagogical

                                    Economies (cp)

                              Alexander Welsh, From Copyright to Copperfield, sels. (cp)

 

Nov. 5              Antidotes to captialist alienation: writing and domesticity

                              Dickens, cont., Bk. 2, ch. 6 – Bk. 3, ch. 11

                              Andrew Miller, “Rearranging the Furniture of Our Mutual Friend” in

                                    Novels Behind Glass (cp)

 

Nov. 12                  Speculation and the novel I

                              Dickens, cont., Bk. 3, ch. 12 – Concl.

                              Barbara Weiss, “The Development of Corporate Capitalism” in The Hell of the

English (cp)

Mary Poovey, “Speculation and Virtue in Our Mutual Friend” in Making a

Social Body (cp)

                        Michael Cotsell, “The Book of Insolvent Fates: Financial Speculation in OMF”

(cp)

                        Anon., “Stockbroking and the Stock Exchange” (Poovey) (cp)

                        Alexander Innes Shand, “Speculative Investments” (Poovey) (cp)

 

Nov. 19                  On realism

                              Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, Chs. 1-49

                              Patrick Brantilinger, “Cashing in on the Real in Thackeray and Trollope” in

                                    The Reading Lesson (cp)

                              Lukacs, “Reaslism in the Balance,” in Aesthetics and Politics (cp)

 

Nov. 26                  Thanksgiving Break: no class

 

Dec. 3              Speculation and the novel II

                              Trollope, concl., Chs. 50-100 

                              Weiss, “Bankruptcy as Metaphor: Social Apocalypse” in The Hell of the English

                                    (cp)

                              Cristina Crosby, “Financial” (cp)

                              D. Morier Evans, “Whither Is Limited Liability Leading Us?” (Poovey) (cp)

                              Laurence Oliphant, “The Autobiography of a Joint-Stock Company (Limited)” 

                                    (Poovey) (cp)

 

Course Requirements:

 

1.       Two five-page orally presented papers; papers may focus on the primary material, secondary material, connections between the two, or outside research.  These papers will be precirculated via e-mail by noon on the Tuesday before class.  I particularly encourage papers that construct close-readings of the novels in light of the historical/economic topic of the week (including in terms of insights gleaned from the other required readings for the week) OR papers that draw upon some outside research to shed new light (i.e. other than that provided by required readings) on the topic of the week.

 

2.       Weekly discussion questions; each person should bring in one (mentally) prepared discussion question.  These questions can focus on any of the reading, on connections between the readings and discussions from previous weeks, or on the paper precirculated for that day.  We will begin each class by reviewing these questions.

 

3.       20-25 page seminar paper, based on original research.