| Lerninhalte |
Compared to his friend Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins has generally been neglected by literary scholars, even though he was also one of the most successful and popular Victorian authors. The Woman in White is one of the most important 'sensation novels', whereas The Moonstone has been described as an early detective novel. Both have dramatic, at times melodramatic, plot lines that centre on love, madness, mistaken identity, and long-forgotten crimes that come back to haunt everyone associated with them. This seminar will employ both narratological and cultural studies approaches to investigate, on the one hand, the cultural norms/values surrounding imperialism, class and gender, as well as the ways in which literary texts may reinforce or criticise such norms through narrative technique. Collins's narratives were formally innovative: each novel combines the perspectives of various characters, leaving the reader to doubt both the values they express and the 'truth' behind events. Please purchase the Oxford World Classics edition of both texts, as those are reliable and annotated, providing insight into significant changes Collins made to the text. |
