Fiction Before Austen

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• make connections between fiction and other forms of cultural production from across the eighteenth century
• criticise current critical debate and apply that criticism to individual works of fiction
• evaluate non-canonical works of fiction and their significance to current accounts of eighteenth-century fiction

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The complex relations between individual works of fiction and between fiction and other forms of cultural production
• The major critical and historical approaches to eighteenth-century fiction
• The specific critical and historical approaches needed to engage with an individual text

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Demonstrate intellectual independence in your writing.
• carry out your own research on a topic

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• work directly from primary sources
• critically evaluate secondary sources
• analyse complex literary texts and their contexts

At the start of the eighteenth century, the novel as we now know it did not exist. Since the 1980s the idea of the 'Rise of the Novel', first conceptualised by Ian Watt, has been rehearsed and rehearsed again as critics have explored new narratives and new approaches to narrative fiction. The once all-male line-up of great eighteenth-century fiction is now being recast not simply by claiming lost female 'greats' – the predecessors and contemporaries of Jane Austen - but by rethinking our understanding of fiction and its place in eighteenth-century culture. While some critics have looked back to the late seventeenth century, exploring the early contexts of fiction writing, the uncertain position of fiction between truth and lies, and the relationships between 'novel' and 'romance', other critics have proffered Marxist re-readings of Ian Watt's traditional canon, turning to the vast number of non-canonical texts in order to raise questions of literary value, femininity and sexuality, or focusing upon fiction as a central act of cultural production. This module invites you to explore some of these different approaches, raised by recent attempts to re-map the rise of eighteenth-century fiction. Authors are likely to include Eliza Haywood, Daniel Defoe, Charlotte Lennox, Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen; we will be drawing on conduct books, criminal biographies and contemporary journalism by male and female writers; and we will use some weeks to discuss non-canonical fiction from the period. The aim overall is to provide you with a firm grounding in the history and development of the novel form over the long eighteenth century.

Teaching and learning methods

Seminars and presentations will look closely at individual texts and improve students’ abilities to articulate a position and engage in academic debates. The methods aim to introduce new works and ideas, to improve students’ ability to read unfamiliar and challenging texts and to organize ideas into written and oral arguments. You will participate in researching promising non-canonical texts for discussion in later weeks of the module and you will lead a group discussion about one of these texts: both of these activities will help to prepare you to produce a research-led essay which combines detailed critical analysis with a firm awareness of larger critical and historical debates.

Teaching methods include:

• Seminars
• Individual sessions to develop an essay topic
• Office hours for individual feedback on essays

Learning activities include

• Experience of organizing and running a seminar
• Individual study and research
• Researching and presenting non-canonical texts

Resources & Reading list

Internet Resources

detailed suggested reading.

Textbooks

John Skinner (2001). An Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Raising the Novel. Basingstoke.

Richard Kroll, ed (1998). The English Novel, 1700 to Fielding, & The English Novel, Smollett to Austen. Harlow.

J. Paul Hunter. Before Novels [intro].

Lennard J. Davis. Factual Fictions [chps. 1&2].

John Richetti, ed (1996). The Cambridge companion to the eighteenth-century novel. Cambridge.

John J. Richetti. Popular Fiction before Richardson [intro].

M.M. Bakhtin. The Dialogic Imagination [chps. 1&2].

Ian Watt. The Rise of the Novel (intro).

Assessment strategy

There will be no non-contributory assessments in this module, but classroom activities and individual discussions, should help you to judge how you are progressing in the module

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External