English 9123 ~ The Eighteenth-Century Novel in Theory and Practice

Professor Alison Conway

Summer 2015, Full Course

NB: This course is set to meet twice weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
The first class will be Thursday, May 7, and the last class will be Monday, June 29, with a break the week of May 25-29.


Description:
This course will investigate prose fiction before 1800 and the theories that have been developed to define the importance of the eighteenth century in the novel’s history. In particular, we will consider how developments in literary theory since 2000—the new materialisms, postsecular studies, the global Enlightenment, among others—take us back to the philosophical and cultural contexts that shaped the novel’s early articulations. We will conclude by reading Coetzee’s Disgrace as an instance of how we read the eighteenth-century novel now.


View the course syllabus here: English 9123.