Eighteenth-Century British Fiction (8420) 

W 5:20 - 7:15, Tolentine 310B

Scott Black, SAC 427, 610-519-4642
[office hours: MW 2:00-3:30, and by appointment]              
scott.black@villanova.edu
http://www.homepage.villanova.edu/scott.black

In this seminar we will explore the “rise of the novel” both in terms of the form’s internal history (its formal innovations, what it requires of the reader, how it serves its functions) and its external history (its place in various histories of modernity, how it was shaped by these changes, what function it serves). We’ll also consider some of the recent critical discussions about these issues, examining the various ways scholars have construed the relationships between the evolving form and other cultural, social, and political developments. By situating the novels within the framework of current literary historical debates about what literature meant in the eighteenth-century, we’ll have an opportunity to explore how critical arguments are made, and consider how academic problems of literary criticism and history interact with the readerly pleasures and the ethical exigencies of the text. Novels function within their worlds in complex ways, as both tools and games, as means of understanding and forms of play; we’ll try to negotiate the various ways of reading our texts ask of us. Finally, we’ll have occasion to think about what these novels have to do with our supposedly post-eighteenth-century world by looking at two kinds of adaptations of them, film versions and a couple recent works that engage similar issues.

Texts (available in bookstore):

Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722)

Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740)

Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996)

Henry Fielding, Shamela (1741) / Joseph Andrews (1742)

Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (1995)

Fanny Burney, Evelina (1778)

Jane Austen, Emma (1816)

Each week, alongside the primary text, we’ll read some of the important recent criticism about the novel. In addition to the required secondary readings, I’ve suggested other critical essays (listed in order of recommendation). These will provide deeper background on the novel, the context, or the critic, and will be useful to those presenting or writing on—or those simply interested in—the given novel. All of the criticism is on reserve in the library; a complete list follows the syllabus.

Requirements include: weekly responses to the readings and/or criticism (a page or so), an in-class presentation (10 min., with notes/outline handed in), and an independently researched seminar paper (with proposal, bibliography, and draft due along the way). Finally—to stress the obvious—the seminar will rise or fall based on the active and enthusiastic participation of all its members; such participation is expected and required.

8/27     When was the eighteenth-century? What is the novel?

                        criticism, required: Watt, chs 1-2

9/3       Defoe, Moll Flanders (--p. 188)

                        criticism, required: Hunter (in Cambridge)

                        recommended: Hunter, Intro (Before Novels)

9/10     Moll Flanders

criticism, required: McKeon, Intro (1-22)

recommended: Bender (in Kroll 1), Castle (in Kroll 1)

9/17     Richardson, Pamela (1740), vol 1

criticism, required: Armstrong, ch 3: 96-134 (also in Kroll 1)

                        recommended: Armstrong, ch 1

9/24     Pamela, vol 2

criticism, required: Van Sant (in Kroll 1) 

                        recommended: Watt, ch 5

10/1     The Pamela Event and literary history

criticism, required: Warner, ch 1 (1-44), ch 5 (176-230)

10/8     Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

10/15   fall break

10/22   Fielding, Shamela & Joseph Andrews, bks 1-2

criticism, required: Iser, ch. 2 (29-56); McKeon, ch 12: 394-409

                        recommended: Varey

10/29   Joseph Andrews, bks 3-4

                        criticism, required: Campbell (in Kroll 1); Warner, ch. 6 (231-76)

                        recommended: Richetti, ch 5: pp. 121-35

11/5     Hornby, High Fidelity

(initial proposal due)

11/12   Burney, Evelina, vols 1-2

criticism, required: Gallagher, ch 5

recommended: Gallagher, Intro

11/19   Evelina, vol 3

criticism, required: Straub, Fraiman (both in Norton Evelina)

                        recommended: Graham, Doody (both in Norton Evelina)

(first bibliography due)

11/26   Thanksgiving

12/3     Austen, Emma

                        criticism, required: Butler, Poovey, Johnson (all in Norton Emma)

                        recommended: Wiltshire (in Norton Emma)

12/10   Emma and Clueless

The following books are on reserve at the library:
 

Armstrong, Nancy, Desire and Domestic Fiction (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987)
 

“Cambridge”: Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth Century Novel, ed. John Richetti (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996)

Gallagher, Catherine, Nobody’s Story (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1994)

Hunter, J. Paul, Before Novels (New York: Norton: 1990)

Iser, Wolfgang, The Implied Reader (Baltimore: Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974).

Kroll, Richard, ed., The English Novel: 1700-Fielding (New York: Longman, 1998) (“Kroll 1”)

Kroll, Richard, ed., The English Novel: Smollett to Austin (New York: Longman, 1998) (“Kroll 2”)

McKeon, Michael, The Origins of the English Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1987)

“Norton Emma”: Austen, Emma, Norton Critical Edition (New York: Norton, 2000)

“Norton Evelina”: Burney, Evelina, Norton Critical Edition (New York: Norton, 1998)

Richetti, John, The English Novel in History 1700-1784 (New York: Routledge, 1999)

Varey, Simon, Joseph Andrews: A Satire of Modern Times (Boston: Twayne, 1990)

Warner, William, Licensing Entertainment (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1998)

Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1957)