ENGL 525: Eighteenth Century British Novel
Professor: Dr. Terry Bowers
Location: CofC (Room TBD)
Time: Monday 6:00 – 8:45
*Fulfills the British Literature before 1800 requirement
For many readers, when they think of literature, they think of fiction, specifically novels. The emergence of the novel as a literary form in the eighteenth century marks one of the most important developments in literary history, which profoundly affected readers and society generally. The distinguished historian Lynn Hunt, for example, credits the novels of this period—especially epistolary novels—with contributing to the invention of human rights. And Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker suggests that novels likely led to the reduction of interpersonal violence in the Western world. In this course, we will consider why novels emerged in the eighteenth century and examine their cultural impact. We will read major novels of the period by Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Austen, and others, and encounter a variety of different types of novels, including epistolary and gothic novels.
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