ENGL 485-01, Studies in the Novel, Fall 2009

Abstract

The purpose of this course is to guide and support you as you develop an independent statement of your own on a major work of fiction, reading the novel both within the history of the development of its genre and within the history of its time and place. The first eight weeks of the term are designed to immerse you in one of contemporary literary history’s most vigorous and fascinating disputes, i.e. the ongoing argument about why the novel emerged as a distinctive genre in the eighteenth century, why it attained such dominance in the nineteenth, and why it changed so much in the twentieth. Our critical and theoretical readings all ask versions of these questions, trying to understand the way that literary genres experience and register historical change. The focus of the class will shift gradually from common readings to individualized study, as each student brings these questions to bear in the reading of a particular novel.