This course examines the emergence of the novel as a literary genre in the eighteenth century. It places the novel within the changing landscape of the period that fostered its development, and explores the ways in which this new form of writing was shaped by, and in turn reflected and responded to alterations in the texture of society and economy (the rise of the middle class), transformations in philosophical thought (empiricism, perception, and human nature), and changes in the means of literary production and dissemination (the rise of print culture and literacy). Textual analysis focuses on works by canonical writers such as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne in an attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the diverse representatives of the prolific novelistic production of the eighteenth century. These examples offer fertile ground for a discussion of the formal characteristics of the novel, of the themes and concerns it addressed, and of the various subgenres that eighteenth-century novelists explored (e.g. the epistolary novel, the novel of sentiment, satire and parody). Classes come to a close with a brief consideration of the place of female novelists in the eighteenth-century literary production, and a discussion on the legacies and afterlives of the eighteenth-century which foregrounds the impact of the era on the subsequent development of the novel, and the ways in which contemporary fiction returns to and re-imagines this formative period of the genre.
Assessment:
Final exam and optional research paper or oral presentation
