English 349,
The Eighteenth-Century English Novel
Spring 2000
Literary historians tell us the English novel "rose" from its
primitive origins in the eighteenth century. In this course
we'll try to figure out what this "rise" is all about by reading
works like Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, Samuel
Richardson's Pamela, Henry Fielding's Joseph
Andrews, and Frances Burney's Evelina, as well as a
few of their predecessors. We'll look at sentimentalism, the
Gothic novel, the romance, and literary criticism from both the
eighteenth century and the twentieth, all in the hopes of
understanding the "new" genre of the English novel.