We will consider the novel as responding to a network of interrelated problems – of the self and its imaginative politics – at the representational crossroads of medieval epic, courtly romance, spiritual autobiography, picaresque satire, colonialist adventure, gallant intrigue, baroque casuistry, bourgeois conduct book, sentimental love story, moral treatise, psychological realism, and mock-heroic “comic epic in prose.” As the emerging literary “form of forms,” the early modern novel vibrantly juxtaposes and interweaves all these different generic strands. Our readings and discussion will refer to the European context of the evolution of this narrative form in England. Description: This course will canvas some of the “origins” of the English novel and trace its development (particularly as anti-romance satire and realism) up to the mid-eighteenth century.
0 kommentar(er)
