Time Schedule:
Jamie E Oldham
ENGL 242
Seattle Campus
Critical interpretation and meaning in works of prose fiction, representing a variety of types and periods.
Class description
For Victorian writer John Ruskin, home “is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home.� The notion of a domestic sanctuary that could and would protect its inhabitants from the anxieties of the outside world was a powerful structuring myth in the Victorian era. However, luckily for the student of nineteenth century literature, the Victorian home was rather more porous than Ruskin’s description would lead us to believe: the worries and struggles of the factory, the poorhouse, the brothel, the public house, the teeming streets, etc., all found their way across the threshold to bask in the glow of the Victorian hearth. The novellas, poems, essays and short stories we will read in this course all meditate on the concept of home just as fervently as Ruskin does, but with one key difference: All of the homes in them will open wide the doors to “terror, doubt and division,� and will give us all the fodder we need to talk about hauntings, ghosts, crypts, prisons, insanity, murder, vampires, and decadence.
Student learning goals
To develop close reading and analytical skills
To place literary and non-literary texts in conversation with one another
To develop a critical framework for thinking about 19th century British fiction
To read and engage with current literary criticism
General method of instruction
Discussion, group work
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
