Dawn Goode 3 credits

          This course will focus on the origins and development of the English novel through the eighteenth century.  As eighteenth-century Britain experienced profound social, economic, and political change so too did the form and purpose of fiction.  We will chart the “rise” of the novel and the genre developments subsequent to it by reading some of the genre’s representative works.  We will also look at political, economic, historical, and cultural theories that attempt to account for the rise of the novel form.  We will look at the romance, the epistolary, the sentimental, the criminal, the realist, and the Gothic novel, and we will look at some of the changing socio-cultural interests of the period which may have impacted the evolutions of these disparate genres.  Some of the authors we will read include: Burney, Cleland, Defoe, Fielding, Haywood, Radcliffe, Richardson, and Sterne.

Back to Courses

JMU Web Privacy Statement