This course will focus entirely on one of the greatest nineteenth-century novels, George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Because Middlemarch was published in eight installments over the course of a year (from December 1871 to December 1872), we will read this great novel in eight 120-page installments over the course of the quarter. Like the season finale episodes of a television series, each installment ends with a climax and crisis that provokes suspense about what will happen next. Centered on the live of four families, Eliot subtitled her novel “a Study of Provincial Life” to emphasize her analytic probing of all the levels of society and many of the central preoccupations of its characters: medicine, law, business, politics and, of course, love. Students in the seminar will do oral presentation on a critical essay on Middlemarch. The seminar will climax with a research paper. Note that the seminar meets once a week on Wednesdays. Because discussion is such an important part of the seminar, I am discouraging the use of laptops or tablets. Instead, we will all be using THE PENGUIN CLASSIC MIDDLEMARCH. Ed. by Rosemary Ashton. Please bring this edition of Middlemarch to class for the first day,
You can find it on Amazon for $6.50 here:

Requirements: 1 oral presentation; one 7-8 page research paper