ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI
SCHOOL OF ENGLISH
G-LSUD3 EnLit330: The 18th Century Novel
Spring Semester 2015
Instructor: Dr. Kanarakis Yannis ([email protected])
Class:
Office hours: Mondays 11:30-14:00
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The course looks at the emergence, development, diffusion and popularity of the novel in
18th-century Britain. It examines the formal characteristics that differentiate the novel from
earlier forms of prose fiction and the relation between culture and genre, i.e. the novels’
response to changing modes of perception as these were affected by the new philosophy and
science, the rise of the middle classes and free trade ideas, the influence of the Press and the
taste of new reading publics. Focusing on the work of major canonical writers (Fielding,
Richardson, Sterne), we shall examine how their novels relate to such changes in outlook,
values and practices, what image of ‘reality’ and ‘human nature’ they construct, and how the
novels reflect, respond to or try to resolve the tension between traditional orthodoxies and
new developments. The course will also explore all major subgenres that have contributed to
the rise and popularity of the novel, such as, epistolary writing, the picaresque, Augustan
satire, and sentimentality.
COURSE ASSESSMENT/REQUIREMENTS
- Students can choose either to take the end-of-semester exam which will cover the
entire semester OR write an MLA-styled research paper of about 4.000 words (40%)
and answer only one question in the final exam (60%). Students who opt for the essay
should have some experience in the writing of research papers. The topic will be
chosen individually by each student after consultation with the instructor. Papers
should be handed in at appointed dates during the semester. The intention of the essay
scheme is to provide the opportunity for the exercise of research and critical skills to
those students who are seriously interested in pursuing this line of academic
occupation. For further details, as well as advice on methodological assistance, please
contact the instructor.
- Even though there will be no specific percentage of your grade attached to
participation and attendance, contributing regularly to class discussions will help your
grade significantly. To this purpose, you will be expected to study the assigned
material before coming to class.
COURSE MATERIAL
Books
1) Samuel Richardson, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740).
2) Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (1742).
3) Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768).
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WORKING SCHEDULE
Weeks 1, 2, 3,
The Rise of the Novel:
Background reading on theories of the novel and debates about its origins.
Eagleton, Terry. «What is a Novel?» in The English Novel: An Introduction.
Watt, Ian. «Realism and the Novel Form» and «The Reading Public and the Rise of the
Novel» in The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. «Epic and Novel» in Hoffman and Murphy (eds) Essentials
Of the Theory of Fiction. Chapter 3.
Armstrong, Nancy. «The Rise of the Domestic Woman,» in Desire and Domestic Fiction.
Hunter, Paul. «The Novel and Social/Cultural History,» in Richetti, John, The Cambridge
Introduction to The 18th Century Novel, 1998.
McKeon, Michael. «Generic Transformation and Social Change: Rethinking the Rise of the
Novel,» 1985.
Weeks 4, 5, 6
KEY TEXT: Samuel Richardson, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740).
The epistolary novel
The rise of print Culture
Female Domesticity
Romance
Doody, Margaret Anne. A Natural Passion: A Study of the Novels of Samuel
Richardson, 1974.
McKeon, Michael. «The Institutionalization of Conflict (i): Richardson and
the Domestication of Service,» in The Origins of the Novel: 1600-1740, 2002.
Armstrong, Nancy. «Strategies of Self-Production: Pamela» in Desire and Domestic
Fiction: A Political History of the Novel, 1987.
Watt, Ian. «Love and the Novel: Pamela,» The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe,
Richardson and Fielding, 2001.
Gwilliam, Tassie. «Pamela and the Duplicitous Body of Femininity,» in Samuel
Richardson’s Fictions of Gender, 1993.
Whyman, Susan. «Letter Writing and the Rise of the Novel: The Epistolary Literacy
of Jane Johnson and Samuel Richardson,» 2007.
Weeks 7, 8, 9, 10
KEY TEXT: Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (1742).
Augustan Satire / The Burlesque / Mock-Heroic / Parody
Picaresque
Narrator & Reader: The Rising Reading Public
Digression
Realism
Richetti, John. The Cambridge Companion to the 18th Century Novel, 1996.
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Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, 1966.
Eagleton, Terry. «Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson,» in The English
Novel: An Introduction, 2005.
Lund, Roger. «Augustan Burlesque and the Genesis of Joseph Andrews,» 2006.
McCrea, Brian. «Rewriting Pamela: Social Change and Religious Faith in Joseph
Andrews,» 1984.
Baines, Paul. «Pamela» in Claude Rawson, The Cambridge Companion to Henry
Fielding, 2007.
Weeks 11, 12, 13
KEY TEXT: Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France
and Italy (1768).
Sentimentality
Travel Writing
Stream of Consciousness
Eagleton, Terry. «Laurence Sterne,» in The English Novel: An Introduction, 2005.
Manning, Susan. «Sensibility,» in Keymer, Tom, The Cambridge Companion to English
Literature from 1740 to 1830, 2004.
Chandler, James. «The Politics of Sentiment: Notes Toward a New Account,» 2010.
Keymer, Thomas. «A Sentimental Journey and the Failure of Feeling,» in
Keymer, Thomas (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne,
2009.
Watts, Carol. «The Modernity of Sterne,» in Pierce, David & Voogd Peter Jan de.
Laurence Sterne in Modernism and Postmodernism, 1996.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
Armstrong, Nancy & Tennenhouse Lenny. The Imaginary Puritan: Literature, Intellectual
Labour and the Origins of Personal Life.
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.
Brink, Andre. The Novel: Language and Narrative from Cervantes to Calvino.
Brown, Laura. Ends of Empire: Women and Ideology in Early Eighteenth-Century
English Literature.
Castle, Terry. Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in 18th-Century
English Culture and Fiction, 1986.
Davis, Lennard. Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel.
Doody, Margaret Anne. The True Story of the Novel.
Ellis, Markman. The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender, and Commerce in the
Sentimental Novel, 1996.
Galagher, Catherine. Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the
Marketplace, 1670-1820.
Hobsbawm, E.J.. Industry and Empire
Hunter, J. Paul. «What was New about the Novel?» in Before Novels: The Cultural
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Context of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction.
Lukacs, Georg. The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the
Forms of Great Epic Literature.
Meiksins, Ellen. The Origin of Capitalism.
McGann, Jerome. The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style.
McKeon, Michael. Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740.
Nixon, Cheryl L. (ed). Novel Definitions: An Anthology of Commentary on the
Novel, 1688-1815.
Perry, Ruth. Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature
and Culture, 1748-1818, 2004.
Rawson, Claude Julien. Satire and Sentiment: 1660-1830, 1994.
Richetti, John. The English Novel in History, 1700-1780.
Scholes, Robert, James Phelan & Robert Kellogg. The Nature of Narrative.
Chapters 1-3.
Uphaus, Robert W. (ed). The Idea of the Novel in the Eighteenth Century.
Van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel: Form and Function.
Van Sant, Ann Jessie. 18th-Century Sensibility and the Novel: The Senses in Social
Context, 1993.
Berker-Benfield, G.J. The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in 18th Century
Britain, 1992.
Keymer, Tom. The Cambridge Companion to English Literature from 1740 to
1830, 2004.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Chung, Ewha. Samuel Richardson’s New Nation: Paragons of the Domestic Sphere
And «Native» Virtue, 1998.
Day, Robert Adams. «Speech Acts, Orality, and the Epistolary Novel,» 1980.
«Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form,» 1984.
Doody, Margaret Anne. Samuel Richardson: Tercentenary Essays, 1989.
Fasick, Laura. «The Edible Woman: Eating and Breast-Feeding in the Novels of
Samuel Richardson,» 1993.
Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Garcia, Pedro Javier. «Novel, Romance and Quixotism in Richardson’s Pamela,»
1996.
Morrison, A.D. «Pamela and Plato: Ancient and Modern Epistolary Narratives,»
2014.
Mullan, John. Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the 18th
Century, 1990.
Park, William. «What was New about the ‘New Species of Writing,’» 1970.
Poovey, Mary. «Aesthetics and Political Economy in the 18th Century: The Place of
Gender in the Social Constitution of Knowledge»
Richetti, John. The Cambridge Companion to the 18th Century Novel, 1996.
Townsend, Alex. Autonomous Voices: An Exploration of Polyphony in the Novels
of Samuel Richardson, 1970.
Warner, William. «The Elevation of the Novel in England: Hegemony and
Literary History,» 1992.
Woertendyke, Gretchen. «Romance to Novel: A Secret History,» 2009.
HENRY FIELDING
Baker, Sheridan. «Fielding and the Irony of Form,» 1968.
Bartolomeo, Joseph. «Interpolated Tales as Allegories of Reading: Joseph
Andrews», 1991.
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Battestin, Martin. The Moral Basis of Fielding’s Art: A Study of Joseph
Andrews, 1959.
Cauthen, B. I.. «Fielding’s Digressions in Joseph Andrews», 1956.
Cruise, James. «Fielding, Authority, and the New Commercialism in Joseph
Andrews,» 1987.
Keymer, Tom. The Cambridge Companion to English Literature from 1740 to 1830,
2004.
Park, William. «Fielding and Richardson,» 1966.
Perl, Jeffrey. «Anagogic Surfaces: How to Read Joseph Andrews,» 1981.
Rivero, Albert. Critical Essays on Henry Fielding, 1998.
Rawson, Claude. Henry Fielding: A Critical Anthology, 1973.
Order from Confusion Sprung: Studies in 18th Century Literature from
Swift to Cowper, 1985.
LAURENCE STERNE
Braudy, Leo. «The Form of the Sentimental Novel»
Duncan, Jeffrey. «The Rural Ideal in 18th Century Fiction,» 1968.
Hartlrey, Lodwick Charles. Laurence Sterne in the 20th Century.
Traugott, John. Laurence Sterne: A Collection of Critical Essays.
MacLean, Kenneth. «Imagination and Sympathy: Sterne and Adam Smith».
Mullan John. Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the 18th
Century.
Lamb, Jonathan. Sterne’s Fiction and the Double Principle.
«The Comic Sublime and Sterne’s Fiction».
Smitten, Jeffrey. «Spatial Form as Narrative Technique in ‘A Sentimental
Journey’», 1975.
Kay, Carol. Political Constructions: Defoe, Richardson and Sterne in Relation to
Hobbes, Hume and Burke, 1988.
Van Sant, Ann Jessie. 18th-Century Sensibility and the Novel: The Senses in Social
Context, 1993.
McGann, Jerome. The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style.
Rawson, Claude Julien. Satire and Sentiment: 1660-1830, 1994.
Ellis, Markman. The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender, and Commerce in the
Sentimental Novel, 1996.
Berker-Benfield, G.J. The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in 18th Century
Britain, 1992.