Kursinformation

Strange, inartistic, diagreeable – all these words were used by critics to describe Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights when it was first published in the 1840s. Like her sisters Charlotte and Anne, Emily published her novel under a pseudonym, causing much debate about who authored these novels that were not regarded as the masterpieces that readers and critics consider them today. All three sisters wrote fiction that shocked or puzzled parts of the reading public and (Christian) critics alike . By now, however, the three novels we are going to read and discuss in this seminar (Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Wuthering Heights) have become classics and are partially also regarded as early feminist fiction and far ahead of their times in different ways.
In this class, we will not only delve deeply into the novels by talking about their themes, forms, language and characters but also take into consideration their circumstances of production, their reception since the 1840s, and their continued presence in (British) literature and culture.