Words Like Daggers: The Epistolary Novel

Letters as novels, novels in letters: this course traces the development of the epistolary novel, as it was cultivated in Europe from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Through focused discussions of seminal, as much as fascinating, specimens of the genre, we will study the major impact that epistolary fiction had on the stylistic and conceptual evolution of the novel in general, also exploring its interactions with a range of established or shifting social structures, gender roles, discursive practices, and modes of consciousness. Authors include Montesquieu, Laclos, Goethe, Hölderlin, Stoker, Foscolo, Tabucchi, Alexandrou, and Galanaki.