REALISM AND ΤHE ENGLISH ΝΟVEL

Course Information
TitleΡΕΑΛΙΣΜΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΑΓΓΛΙΚΟ ΜΥΘΙΣΤΟΡΗΜΑ / REALISM AND ΤHE ENGLISH ΝΟVEL
CodeΛογ6-336
FacultyPhilosophy
SchoolEnglish Language and Literature
Cycle / Level1st / Undergraduate
Teaching PeriodWinter/Spring
CommonNo
StatusActive
Course ID600007086

Programme of Study: 2024-2025

Registered students: 0
OrientationAttendance TypeSemesterYearECTS
KORMOSElective CoursesWinter/Spring-6

Class Information
Academic Year2017 – 2018
Class PeriodWinter
Faculty Instructors
Weekly Hours3
Total Hours39
Class ID
600109025
Course Type 2016-2020
  • Scientific Area
Course Type 2011-2015
Specific Foundation / Core
Mode of Delivery
  • Face to face
Erasmus
The course is also offered to exchange programme students.
Language of Instruction
  • English (Instruction, Examination)
Learning Outcomes
• Familiarization of students with the term ‘realism’ in art and the narrative conventions of realism in literature • Ability of students to perceive realism in relation to the literary modes that preceded it and those that followed it • Familiarization of students with the political, social, and cultural context of the novels discussed, and ability to judge how it is reflected in them
General Competences
  • Apply knowledge in practice
  • Retrieve, analyse and synthesise data and information, with the use of necessary technologies
  • Adapt to new situations
  • Make decisions
  • Work autonomously
  • Work in teams
  • Work in an interdisciplinary team
  • Appreciate diversity and multiculturality
  • Demonstrate social, professional and ethical commitment and sensitivity to gender issues
  • Be critical and self-critical
  • Advance free, creative and causative thinking
Course Content (Syllabus)
What do we mean when we refer to the idea of ‘objective reality’? Does it exist or is it obsolete in the context of our postmodern, post-reality world? Can it be represented, and, if yes, how has this happened in literature and the arts? This course will explore the complexity, slipperiness, and elasticity of the terms ‘real’ and ‘realism’ and trace their trajectory from the Age of Reason to our post-truth era with emphasis on the novel. Although realist fiction is undoubtedly committed to a historical particularity, as a form of mimesis realism can never be identical with that which it represents, since its tools, i.e., language/words, can never function as flawless, objective mirrors. The serious artistic treatment of ordinary people and their experience, linear plots, omniscient narrators, and round characters are of course elements associated with a realistic mode of representation. Yet, the British nineteenth-century realist project is not explicit, this course aims to show, and British realist writers seem to exploit narrative techniques in ways that acknowledge the impossibility of a hundred percent objective representation or even question the nature of reality. Although realism has been accused of promoting dominant power structures, in its effort to project a recognizable image of society, we will examine how it can also complicate and question the historical moments it represents.
Keywords
novel, realism, regency, nineteenth-century England, industrialization, mimesis, narrative tecnhiques
Educational Material Types
  • Slide presentations
  • Audio
  • Multimedia
  • Interactive excersises
  • Book
Use of Information and Communication Technologies
Use of ICT
  • Use of ICT in Course Teaching
  • Use of ICT in Laboratory Teaching
  • Use of ICT in Communication with Students
Course Organization
ActivitiesWorkloadECTSIndividualTeamworkErasmus
Lectures
Reading Assigment
Artistic Workshop
Project
Written assigments
Artistic creation
Total
Student Assessment
Description
A. an essay-type exam at the end (two essays), or B. (if numbers permit) 1) oral presentation on a selected topic, 2) a small written assignment, and 3) an essay-type exam at the end (one essay). The essay is assessed on the basis of organization, argumentation, quality of expression in English, and skills of analysis and synthesis. The final examination is assessed on the basis of factual knowledge and familiarity with the required readings, in addition to the above criteria. The criteria are made known to the students in the introductory courses of the first year and apply in all literature courses. Τhese are also announced on Backboard and stated in the Course Outline.
Student Assessment methods
  • Written Exam with Extended Answer Questions (Formative, Summative)
  • Written Assignment (Formative, Summative)
  • Performance / Staging (Formative, Summative)
  • Report (Formative, Summative)
  • Artistic Performance (Formative, Summative)
Bibliography
Additional bibliography for study
Auerbach. Erich. Mimesis. Trans. Willard Trask. 1946. Princeton UP, 1953. Auerbach, Nina. Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1982. Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. Trans. Richard Miller; with a note on the text by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975. Becker, George J, ed. Modern Literary Realism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1963, rpt. 1973. Beer, Gillian. George Eliot: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. London: Routledge, 1983. Brooks, Peter. Realist Vision. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005. Boyd, Kelly & Rohan Mcwilliam. The Victorian Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2007. Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. 1975. Clarendon P, 1987. Copeland, Edward and Juliet McMaster. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Cambridge U P, 1998. Cullers, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics. 1975. London: Routledge, 1994. (Chapters 7 & 9) da Sousa Correa, Delia. The Ninenteenth-Century Novel: Realisms. New York: Routledge, 2000. Eagleton, Terry. The English Novel: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1989. Gilmour, Robin. The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1830-1890. London & New York: Longman, 1993. Grant, Damian. Realism. London: Methuen, 1970, rpt.1985. Handler, Richard and Daniel Segal. Jane Austen and the Fiction of Culture: An Essay on the Narration of Social Realities. Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. Homans, Margaret. Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing. U of Chicago P, 1986. Jacobus, Mary. “Men of Maxims and The Mill on the Floss”. In Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism. London: Methuen, 1987. 62-79. Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. University of Chicago Press, 1990. Jordan, John O, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. Cambridge U P, 2001. Kettle, Arnold. An Introduction to the English Novel. Vol. 1. 1951. Hutchinson, 1977. Leavis, F.R. The Great Tradition. London: Chatto & Windus, 1973. Levine, George, ed. The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot. Cambridge U P, 2001. Matthew, Colin, ed. The Nineteenth Century, The British Isles: 1815-1901. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Miller, Jonathan and Borin Van Loon. Introducing Darwin and Evolution. Moers, Ellen. Literary Women. New York: Anchor Books, 1977. Morris, Pam. Realism. The New Critical Idiom Series. Ed. John Drakakis. London: Routledge, 2003. Politi, Jina. The Novel and its Presuppositions. Amsterdam: A.M. Hakkert, 1976. (Chapters 1, 2, 8) Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. U of Chicago P, 1984. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of their Own: British Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton UP, 1977. Shires, Linda M, ed. Rewriting the Victorians: Theory, History, and the Politics of Gender. NY: Routledge, 1992. Shuttleworth, Sally. George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning. Cambridge UP, 1984. Spacks, Patricia M. The Female Imagination: A Literary and Psychological Investigation of Women’s Writing. London: Allen and Unwin, 1976. Tallis, Raymond. In Defence of Realism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1998. Tanner, Toni. Jane Austen. London: Macmillan, 1986. Thomson, David. England in the Nineteenth Century 1815-1914. The Pelican History of england. 1950. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978. Walder, Dennis, ed. The Realist Novel. New York: Routledge, 1999. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. 1957. Harmondswoth: Penguin, 1972. Wheeler, Michael. English Fiction of the Victorian Period. 2nd ed. London & New York: Longman, 1994. Williams, Raymond. The English Novel: From Dickens to Lawrence. London: Chatto & Windus, 1970. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. Carol, H. Poston. NY: Norton, 1988.
Last Update
24-09-2020