Topics in Advanced Theory- Theory of the Novel

3 units

The novel has received a sizable share of critical energy. What is it? Where did it come from? How did it develop? What are its ideological tendencies? What are its characteristic preoccupations? In this course we will read a range of influential writings on the novel's origins and development, its defining form and content. These writings will be considered within their own critical contexts (feminist, Marxist, structuralist, etc.) and within the specific historical contexts out of which the novel emerged (shifts in class and gender formation, the development of modern conceptions of the self, the material production of the book). Several novels from the 18th and 19th century will form the basis of our application of theory to text, from methodological abstraction to reading experience, among them, PAMELA, WAVERLEY, and JANE EYRE.