Department of English
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Final Paper Topic
Final papers (5–7 pp.) are due in class on Thursday, September 23, 2010. They should follow the MLA format. Design a week's lesson (for an undergraduate course of 10–12 students, meeting twice for a total of three hours like our class) on the topic "The Rise of Reading." You can think of your lesson as being able to replace a particular week on our Nineteenth-Century British Fiction syllabus, but it should be self-contained enough to fit in other syllabi to which this topic might be relevant. The paper should state a main argument that you would like to make about the rise of reading during the nineteenth century, and show how your reading selections form a structure that illustrates that argument or that will encourage discussion on the issue. Demonstrate how instructors can urge students to engage with the text and the issues it raises as well as ideas that it presents by close reading passages that you will use. Include an outline of your lesson plan, lists of works, excerpts or other class material including class activities as an appendix to the paper.
Plan to cover some usual territory to familiarize students with key events, works, and concepts, but you can experiment with how to organize and teach that usual material. Also consider an original angle to Victorian fiction and its reading. Does the usual territory cover too little or too much? Are there gaps in the usual discussion of the 19th century rise of the novel and of reading? What can you offer your students that fulfills the standard requirement of knowledge on the topic yet also carries your input and critical assessment of the scholarship on this issue?
Some issues that you may want to consider addressing:
Readers: Who are the nineteenth-century readers? From where have they arisen? What is their reception of the works? How do their tastes affect the literature produced during this period? Do their tastes change? Why do they read? How do they read? Where? When?
Writers: Who are some well known and lesser known writers of the time? How has their popularity or obscurity changed? What are their ideas about writing and about fiction?
Writing: How is writing done? What are the conditions for writing in the Victorian period?
Publications: Where do writers publish? What outlets for the written word have emerged during this century? How does their operation affect writing and reader behavior?
Works:
Genres: What genres have emerged and what forgotten? What generic experimentations are there?
Topics: What is written about? Are there common themes or concerns? What is not so commonly written about? What not at all?
Styles: What is Victorian prose like? Which works have a distinctive style? Any stylistic changes in the period? How are ideas presented?
Critics: Who are the critics? What do they say about fiction? What role, if any, do they have in the rise of reading?
Influences, traditions: What are some influences on Victorian fiction? What European or other foreign authors are read? What traditions in reading and writing continue and what have become obsolete?
Implications, impact: How has nineteenth-century fiction influenced later writers and the reading public? What are some implications of this rise in reading?
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Last updated September 12, 2010