Engl 470: Bleak House and Middlemarch
Fall 2007

Hailed by contemporaries and considered by critics today to be the two greatest English novels of the 19^th century, Bleak House (1852-3) by Charles Dickens and Middlemarch (1871-2) by George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Anne Evans) could not be more different and, for us, better entries into the complexity, richness, and strangeness of Victorian Britain. Both novels are magisterial, aiming to encompass the "totality" of English society, but precisely because of their heft – both literal and metaphoric – these novels are often not taught in undergraduate classes. We will rectify this sad omission, but will also do so at a pace that will allow us to properly digest and process these immensely complex novels.

The primary goal of this class is to read, understand, and analyze each of these novels. We will spend considerable time on focused close readings (sometimes "micro-readings") of passages, examining temporal shifts and narrative positions, metaphors and meta-perspectives, repetitions and elisions. Throughout, we will ask "Why? Why does Dickens choose this word or image? Why does Eliot choose that metaphor and how does it operate?" (Both were at the apex of their powers when they wrote these novels). We will also, of course, address plot questions, trace patterns of repetition, unpack themes and their interactions, as well as note what is evaded. Fueling the focus on such close textual and formal analysis is an attempt to understand 19^thc Realism of the British variety – and in this endeavor, no two texts can offer us richer variation than Bleak House and Middlemarch. Finally, because both Dickens and Eliot were drawing on a number of historical developments and events – the Reform Bill of 1832, the Crystal Palace of 1851, the development of railroads, legal and medical reforms, emerging classes and shifting gender relations – we will also learn about some of these struggles and consider each novel’s commentary on these issues.