A major event occurring during Queen Victoria’s reign that could affect how the reader views the novel was the cholera outbreak in England which lasted from 1846-1860. A large part of the issue in controlling the spread in England at the time was misunderstanding and misinformation, particularly pertaining to how the disease spread. To many, it was actually believed that the disease was, “a visitation of Divine Providence on the vicious and an unfortunate catastrophe in the lives of the poor.” (Underwood, 166) This was seemingly the case to many because it seemed people got the sickest in industrial areas, and nurses and higher-class individuals saw much lower numbers of sicknesses overall. An assumption was made, that perhaps the sickness spread through ‘bad air’ or particulates in the air from decaying organics. It was also noted that there was a higher occurrence of disease in areas with unpaved roads or insufficient disposal of trash/garbage in the street....
moreCCU FA 20 ENGL 231 Dashboard
Description
This section of ENGL 231 will concentrate on the avalanche of cultural changes that are produced when seismic shifts in technology have occurred, first during the Industrial Revolution and now in the Digital Revolution. In order to deepen our understanding of the significance of reading and writing to understanding the human experiences associated with these shifts, we will first study the codex novel Middlemarch (published in 1871 but set at the turn of the nineteenth century), before viewing the intermedial adaptations on BBC and YouTube. While the BBC version (1996) is a traditional heritage film, Middlemarch: The Series (2017) was written and directed by an undergraduate student who modernized the hypotext to reflect the digital, global present (for example, by highlighting multi-racial characters and LGBTQ themes). In other words, we will study one nineteenth-century novel as well as a faithful adaptation and a twenty-first revisionary appropriation in order to explore how mechanical and digital technologies have impacted the ways we write about, read, and understand our own subjectivity—personally, racially, politically, and sexually. We will record our thoughts and discoveries along the way by engaging in critical making through multimodal (i.e., alphabet, image, aural, video, and code) writing techniques.
Link:
Middlemarch (the book only)
Galleries, Timelines, and Maps
See "Adding Timeline and Map Entries" on "The COVE" Moodle tile.
See "Adding Timeline and Map Entries" on "The COVE" Moodle tile.