106-058 The Eighteenth-Century Novel: Sex and Sentiment

Note

Availability

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 25 points of first year English, see Prerequisites

Semester

Contact

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 totalling 4000 words. Regular attendance at tutorials is required.

Prescribed Texts

A subject reader will be available.

• J Austen, Sense and Sensibility. World's Classics.
• A Behn, Oroonoko. 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.