ENGL 325T(S) Thinking Through Middlemarch (W)
George Eliot is often called the most intellectual of English novelists. As the first English translater of Strauss and Feuerbach, editor of the Westminster Review, partner of the philosopher George Henry Lewes, and friend of Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, and others, Eliot was abreast of the main intellectual currents of her day. Eliot's fiction doesn't just reflect these currents, it participates actively in them. As a result, Middlemarch, her most accomplished novel, has an intellectual depth and complexity almost unrivalled in English fiction. We will spend the first two weeks, seminar-style, reading and discussing Middlemarch together. Then, moving into tutorial mode, we will reread it, focusing on one of its eight books per week, alongside relevant critical, philosophical, scientific and historical works, ranging from Eliot's contemporaries to the present day.
Format: tutorial. Requirements: five 3- to 5-page essays; five responses.
Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit 10 (expected: 10). Preference given to English majors.
(1700-1900 or Criticism)
Tutorial meetings to be arranged. CASE