Lerninhalte |
The eighteenth century is frequently seen as the time in which the British novel begins to become a prominent genre, before it turns, in the nineteenth century, into a ‘mature’ art form defined by psychological realism. In this seminar, we will (re)consider questions of literary history and canon-making, which are expressed, for instance, in temporal terms such as ‘beginnings’ or developmental metaphors like ‘maturity’. We will look at three novelists which represent different aspects of the eighteenth-century novel in Britain: Samuel Richardson, whose epistolary novel have been influential for many women writers in his time, to whom he served as a mentor, while his writings introduced a gendered view into the novel; Frances Burney, whose popular writings introduced the ‘female’ Bildungsroman into the novel genre; and Maria Edgeworth, whose intellectual engagement with the Enlightenment in general and pedagogy in particular influenced novel writing at the turn to the nineteenth century, while opening its themes up for historically contested topics such as ‘interracial marriage’. The aim of the seminar is to introduce students to an important historical genre of British literature, while sharpening analytic skills of close reading and initiating conceptual discussion of literary history.
In preparation for the course, please read Samuel Richardson: Pamela (1740), Frances Burney: Evelina (1778) and Maria Edgeworth: Belinda (1801). All three texts are available in annotated editions by Penguin Classics or Oxford World’s Classics. |