106-284 Sex and Sentiment in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel

Note

Available as 106-384 at 3rd-year level.

Credit Points

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Subject Description

This subject traces the development of the English novel genre from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, focusing on its construction of masculinity and femininity, and of gendered and class-located cultures of reading, through the discourses of sexuality and sentiment. Social, cultural and economic constituents of "the rise of the novel" will be examined, as will the popular, romance and pornographic generic components of the bourgeois novel. Students who complete this subject should be familiar with current theories about the construction of subjectivity, sexuality and sentimentality in the novel genre and have developed their own critical readings of a range of eighteenth-century English novels.

Assessment

Written work of not more than 5000 words.

Prescribed Texts

Course reader available from the department.

• J Austen, Sense and Sensibility. World's Classics.
• A Behn, Oroonoko. Penguin.
• F Burney, Evelina. Penguin.
• J Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. World's Classics.
• D Defoe, Moll Flanders. World's Classics.
• H Fielding, Shamela.
• E Inchbald, A Simple Story. World's Classics.
• S Richardson, Pamela. Penguin.
• L Sterne, A Sentimental Journey. World's Classics.
• C Lennox, The Female Quixote. World's Classics.