糖心TV

 

The sociology texts:

Really, I refer you back to what we鈥檝e read so far—the shape of the module is such that I wouldn鈥檛 suggest a deep dive into sociology, unless you particularly feel like it. The exams should skew more literary than sociological, although you definitely need to include concepts from the sociologists that we read. The Internet makes a great companion for this: if you google most of the people we鈥檝e read who wrote pre-1950, you鈥檒l get a summary on some web page.

 

What we read in the first week of module was taken from an NLH special issue on sociology and literature. That issue is available here:

 

There鈥檚 great stuff here, and the introduction will give you a sense of why sociology and literature mattered; but again your focus should be on the sociologists we read.

 

Literature: companions

The great thing about a major author module is that the criticism is pretty digested. Where in some of your modules the only relevant criticism (or even texts) might only be in the library, here you pretty much have everything you need prepared for you—particularly for those writing the exam replacement essay. Your go-to texts should be the relevant Companion volumes, the Cambridge and the Blackwell:

 

The Companion was assigned as semi-mandatory reading for the first week, so you should be familiar at least with the introduction. The Blackwell is bigger and (to my lights) less digested: there鈥檚 a huge range of essays in there, and although these are the usual suspects of American criticism, some of them seem frankly to have been phoning their contributions in. Nevertheless, the Lesjak, Anderson (p. 442), Matus, and Duncan pieces might be helpful for thinking about the social and mental sciences and Eliot.

 

There鈥檚 also an older Cambridge Companion, which has different essays—the topics are similar, but I鈥檝e never gone through them at one time to do an essay-by-essay comparison:

 

Further and expanded reading:

There鈥檚 a lot of writing, a lot a lot, on Eliot—you know you鈥檙e a major writer if there鈥檚 a monograph about you and druuuuugs, man. (That鈥檚 , I haven鈥檛 read it, and I can鈥檛 imagine what use it would be to you—but still, who knows. You鈥檇 probably hear the squirrel鈥檚 heart beat a lot better.) These books that I鈥檓 recommending are full-length monographs, so have a look at their introductions and read further to taste. These are more books that have helped me than necessarily super-sociology-related.

 

My own reading of Eliot is indebted to Adela Pinch鈥檚 book on thinking about others:

 

David Kurnick鈥檚 book might not seem directly related, but it has a really smart Eliot chapter relating specifically to the problem of the narrator鈥檚 perspective not being available to the characters:

 

I don鈥檛 know this book, but it describes Eliot and Spencer specifically:

 

Nancy Henry鈥檚 book will have something interesting things to say about Eliot and the contemporary sense of nation (and empire):

 

Finally, the OG of Eliot criticism: