Advanced course                                                                                                       קורס בחירה

Prof. Elana Gomel                              egomel@post.tau.ac.il                             פרופ' אילנה גומל

 

The Victorian novel is commonly discussed in relation to psychological realism as focusing on complex and fully-fledged characters. But as Mikhail Bakhtin pointed out, every literary genre is defined by its chronotope: the complex of spatio-temporal relations which also conditions the representation of the human subject. In this course we will take a different approach to the Victorian novel by focusing on its chronotope, its representation of time and space. We will consider such issues as the rise of the big city and the consequent shift in experience of time and space; the influence of science, particularly evolutionary theory and physics on literature; and the technological revolution in transportation and communication. We will read and discuss several representative novels, such as Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, and Edwin Abbot’s Flatland, along with shorter texts.

A detailed syllabus will be posted before the beginning of the semester.

Requirements: class participation, a midterm paper and the final paper.