Who wants to be a professional? The professions as we know them only came into existence in the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century was also a kind of golden age of the British novel, with Dickens, Trollope, Eliot, and many others delivering a steady stream of substantial novels. Reflecting and refracting their time, many of the novels dealt with the rise of professions, with characters who aspired to be professionals, from clergy to lawyers to writers, and with good and bad professionals. In this course we will look at a number of novels through the century that foreground this topos of professionalism. Some of the novels we'll read will include Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Trollope's The Warden or Dr. Thorne, Gissing's New Grub Street, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Alongside them, we will also read selections from the history and theory of professionalism.
