ENG 397, 398 - Gender, Sensation, & the Novel

Course unit(s): 1
Meets requirement: W when offered as 398
The 1860s saw the widespread circulation of the “sensation novel” ─ a widely popular and somewhat scandalous genre whose common themes included kidnapping, theft, adultery, insanity, bigamy, forgery, seduction, and murder. These novels were “sensational” both in their extreme popularity and their appeal to the senses ─ their habit, as one Victorian reviewer put it, of “preaching to the nerves.” As these novels fictionalized the seamy underside of Victorian life, they often engaged with some of the most disturbing social issues of the day. The first part of our course will investigate five such novels in their Victorian context: Oliver Twist, The Woman in White, Lady Audley’s Secret, East Lynne, and The Moonstone. The second will consider the remaking of sensation fiction in the film and fiction of the 1940s and from the 1990s onward. Satisfies departmental Social Justice and Prose or Drama/Transmedia requirements.