2008 MM The Figure of the Governess in Victorian Culture and 19th Century

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  • Time: Thursdays 10-12 am



Course Description

This course will link the problematic figure of the governess in nineteenth-century culture to the numerous nineteenth-century fictions which takes governesses as their heroines. The governesses' precarious social position and their role as 'home educators' place them at the centre of unsolved issues in family structures, gender relations and gender differentiation in education. The course will thus introduce students to the main issues and developments in nineteenth-century education and nineteenth-century constructions of gender, and invite them to analyse the use which some of the major fictions of the nineteenth century make of this problematic figure. By the beginning of term, students should have purchased and read the following three novels.

  • Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey, ed. R. Inglesfield and H. Marsden, Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 1998. (c. 6-7 EUR, see note below!)
  • Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, ed. Steve Davies, Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006. (c. 8-9 EUR)
  • Henry James, The Aspern Papers AND The Turn of the Screw, ed. Anthony Curtis, Penguin Classics, London: Penguin, 1986. (c. 8 EUR)

Course Requirements for credits as a Master Module "English Literatures":

  1. Regular attendance and active participation (you may miss up to two meetings, whatever the reasons).
  2. An oral presentation of ca. 20 minutes that will form the basis for your subsequent term paper (you present information and develop an argument that must allow you to formulate research questions concerning a particular text and topic, which will then be discussed by the seminar).
  3. A term paper (generally dealing with one or several of the issues raised in your oral contribution; length ca. 20 pages; deadline September 1, 2008).

Requirements for candidates for the Staatsexamenklausur:

  1. Regular attendance and active participation.
  2. An oral presentation of ca. 20 minutes that will allow you to practice collecting, selecting and focusing information and textual analysis, as you will be asked to do in the written exam (you present information and develop an argument that must allow you to formulate research questions concerning a particular text and topic, which will then be discussed by the seminar).
    Alternatively, you may join a group that produces short summaries of the seminar meetings which help you revise for the written exam.

NOTE: Depending on the focus of your contribution, you may take this course as "Brit Lit.wiss" or as "Brit.Cult.Stud.".

NOTE on availability of texts: Herr Janssen of CvO UniBuch informs me that Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey will take longer to order than the other two books. This, however, is the text which we will read first! Please make sure you order your copy early!

10.04.2008

17.04.2008

24.04.2008

01.05.2008

08.05.2008

15.05.2008

22.05.2008

29.05.2008

05.06.2008

12.06.2008

19.06.2008

26.06.2008

03.07.2008

10.07.2008

Reading Materials

Dorith Herfeld, Die Governess zwischen Alterität und Konformität im britischen Roman, 1798-1898, Diss. Univ. Regensburg, 2006