04:30 PM to 07:10 PM R
Innovation Hall 207
Section Information for Spring 2019
The school story did not begin with J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, or even with its most obvious precursor, Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. Our readings will start with works by Sarah Fielding and Mary Wollstonecraft, but we will also consider the girls' school story, represented by novels by L. T. Meade and Angela Brazil.
Schools need not be an official, closely-regulated enclave, so Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies will be a model of "alternative schooling" (Trenton Lee Stewart's The Mysterious Benedict Society is a modern example). Rudyard Kipling's Stalky and Co. will view the school experience from the perspectives of different social classes.
The school story may be largely a British phenomenon, but we will look at the ways the subgenre was adapted in the USA with Louisa May Alcott's Little Men. In Rowling's wildly successful series, the school story takes a modern, as well as futuristic shape; we will examine a work such as Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow or Lev Grossman's The Magicians. Other possibilities: novels by Thomas Farrar, Frances Hodgson Burnett, or Caroline Stevermer.
Requirements: much reading, several short papers and two longer essays, and a final examination.
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Credits: 3
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