Department of English

In this course we will investigate major trends in British novels spanning the 18th and 20th centuries. We will be concerned with building a theory of genre--in other words, answering the question what makes a novel a novel--and analyzing how the novel form develops over the two centuries of our inquiry. Our thematic concerns will include: the role of confession in novels, depictions of the rise of commodity culture, the ideology of romantic love and the economics of marriage, the secularization of British culture, women's independence, the experience of work, and the place of passion. Texts may include: Defoe's Moll Flanders, Austen's Persuasion, C. Bronte's Jane Eyre, Dickens' Dombey and Son, Eliot's Middlemarch, Collin's The Moonstone, Conrad's Heart of Darkness.