ENG 315 READING IN THE AGE OF CAPITAL

An investigation of how reading practices evolved during "the age of capital" - the years 1848-1875 when "capitalism" entered common parlance in conjunction with the rise of the nation-state, vernacular culture, mass literacy, and more widespread university education. The course considers the role literature (namely that of Martineau, Disraeli, Carlyle, Eliot, Carroll, and Hardy) played in facilitating England's transition from a (potential) political revolution to an industrial one, asking how and why the novel in particular became the chief testing ground for broader problems of the era.