Handbook 1996 : Faculty of Arts (Volume 3 page 60)
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106-449 Fiction, Fact and Femininity

Year 4 English.

Credit points: 16.7 4th year

Coordinator: Marion Campbell.

Contact: One 2-hour seminar per week.

Timetable: First semester

Objectives:

Students who complete this subject successfully:

• will have developed a critical understanding of both traditional and revisionist accounts of the 'rise of the English novel';
• will be familiar with current theories about the construction of subjectivity, sexuality and fictionality in the novel genre;
• will have developed their own critical readings of a range of eighteenth-century English fiction.

Content:

This subject examines the development of the English novel from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. It is particularly interested in Foucauldian and feminist revisions of the origins of the novel, and in the historical separation of the category of 'fiction' from 'fact'. Social and economic, as well as generic, constituents of 'the rise of the novel' will be examined, with emphasis on the novel's connection with scandal and masquerade. Equally important is the novel's implication in the construction of 'subjectivity', particularly female subjectivity, and in the development of a gendered discourse of 'sentiment'.

Assessment:

Written work of not more than 6,000 words.

Prescribed texts:

• Behn A Oroonoko Penguin
•   Manley D The New Atalantis Penguin
• Defoe D Moll Flanders World's Classics
• Inchbald E A Simple Story World's Classics
• Montagu M W The Turkish Embassy Letters Virago
• Richardson S Pamela Penguin
• Cleland J Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure World's Classics
• Burney F Evelina Penguin
• Sterne L A Sentimental Journey World's Classics
• Austen J Sense and Sensibility Penguin

Recommended texts:

• Armstrong N Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel Oxford
• Castle T Masquerade and Civilisation: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction Stanford U P. Gallagher C Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670-1820 U California P. Hunter P Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction Norton
• McKeon M The Origins of the English Novel 1600-1740 Johns Hopkins
• Watt I The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding Hogarth Press

English subject : Next:106-412 | Prev:106-448 | Search | Help
Handbook 1996 : Faculty of Arts (Volume 3 page 60)

Status:          Official 1996
Date created:    Oct  9 1995
Last modified:   Oct  9 1995
Authorised by:   Academic Registrar
Email enquiries: Course_Information@registrar.unimelb.edu.au

Copyright © University of Melbourne 1995,1996.