18th Century English Novel

Level: Undergraduate

Division: Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts

Department: Literary Studies

Course Number: LLSL 2332

Course Format: Seminar

Location: NYC campus

Permission Required: No

Description:
This course surveys the development of the novel in England in the eighteenth century. We will read eight pivotal novels: Daniel Defoe (Roxana), Samuel Richardson (Pamela), Charlotte Lennox (The Female Quixote), Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy), Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels), Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto). Henry Fielding (Tom Jones), Henry Mackenzie (The Man of Feeling), plus one ‘memoir‘ (The Life of Olaudah Equiano). These narratives unfolded the imaginative potential of the novel form as well as its capacity to educate the heart. In reading the work of an era that jump-started the history of the novel as we know it, we will gain insight into the sources of our own literary sensibilities and tastes by studying the roots of a major modern genre.

Restrictions:

Level

Open to Undergraduate students.