106-058 Sex, Sentiment & the 18th Century Novel

Usually 25 points of first year English, see Prerequisites, or first year women's studies, see Prerequisites.

This subject traces the development of the English novel genre during the 18th 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 'rise of the novel' will be examined, as will the popular, romance and pornographic generic components of the bourgeois novel genre. 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 18th century English novels.