ENGL 335 - 18th-Century Novels

FDR: HL
Credits: 3
Prerequisites: ENGL 299. A study of prose fiction up to about 1800, focusing on the 18th-century literary and social developments that have been called “the rise of the novel.” Authors likely include Behn, Haywood, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, and/or Austen.

Fall 2013 Topic:

ENGL 335-01: 18th-Century Novels: Gender in the Early English Novel (3). This course studies the development of the early English novel, with a special focus on the depiction of sexuality, marriage, and gender. We begin with three male authors, Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, followed by three female writers, Burney, Radcliffe, and Austen, asking how the rise of the novel was tied to ideas about the relations between the sexes. We conclude by looking across the Atlantic into the mid-nineteenth century, using The Scarlet Letter to see how an American author handled some of the questions raised in the course. British novels to be read (some in excerpted form) include Moll Flanders, Pamela, Tom Jones, Evelina, The Italian, Northanger Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice. (HL) Brodie. Staff.