128220 SE Literary Seminar (MA) (2025S)

Warning:
Ok, how to put it? This is one for you bookworms out there. In other words: if reading lots and lots is not your thing, or if it is your thing but this term you have three more SEs to pass, you better pick a different course, because we are going to plough our way through four novels. Yes, four. 1542 pages of fiction; give or take. In one term. Yesss! Don't say you haven't been warned! Caveat aside: all four novels belong to the category of 'good read' verging on 'page turner'. But still: you must be able to make the time. We are going to tackle them in chronological order of publication date, so if you cannot be deterred: drop in at Facultas bookshop soon and start reading.

It is no coincidence that the novels we are going to discuss have all been published recently. Neo- Victorian fiction first became fashionable in the second half of the 20th century - just think of Wide Sargasso Sea, or The French Lieutenant's Woman, or The Siege of Krishnapur or Sarah Waters's 'trilogy' (Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet, Affinity). During the Noughties, a subgenre within neo-Victorian fiction grew more pronounced: biofiction, that is, literary texts that base the stories they tell on the lives of historical figures: filling the gaps left by historiography through imagination or giving voices to those traditionally neglected or ignored by historians. This subgenre is precisely what we are going to focus on. Since the whole point of biofiction is the tension between history and literary imagination, it is impossible to comment on their relationship or analyse the stylistic devices the novels employ, if one is unclear about the facts. For this reason, it is imperative that you acquaint yourselves with what is known about the historical figures that feature in the novels discussed: the fossil hunter Mary Anning (Chevalier); the Edwardian novelist E.M. Forster (Galgut); Elisabeth, Empress of Austria Hungary (Goodwin); and the colonial doctor James Miranda Barry (Levy). The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is a very good source to start looking for information on the historical figures that are British, famous and dead, and the relevant entries will be made available as .pdf-files on Moodle. For those who only fulfil the latter two conditions, please find other reliable sources above and beyond on what I put on Moodle for you. We are going to discuss the four novels in the context of a discourses of power structured along the axis of race, class, gender and desire, putting emphasis on questions of visibility and invisibility.

This AR pursues several goals: to teach you about gender, race, class and age as intersected, socially constructed, relational categories; to help you contextualise literary texts with historical contexts; to help you bring theory and literature productively into contact with each other. The 'specialist'-task (which every student in class undertakes once) is supposed to provide the basis and impulses for the group work (in which every student in class participates on a weekly basis). You'll be expected to provide a powerpoint presentation as an accompaniment to your specialist task.

One week before the lesson in which it is your turn to act as specialist, I will meet with you in my office (after our lesson) to discuss your ideas, make suggestions and help you structure your plan for the following week. After each lesson, the current specialist, the next week's specialist and I will get together for an immediate reflexion, which takes into consideration your own estimate of your performance, peer-feedback and feedback from me.