Texts:
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe: An Authoritative Text, Background and Sources, Criticism. ed. Michael Shinagel. Norton Critical Editions. London: Norton, 1994.
Suggested Reading:
Eagleton, Terry. The English Novel: An Introduction. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006.
Mayer, Robert. History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe. Cambridge: CUP, 1997.
Leistungsnachweis
Regelmässige Anwesenheit, Referat, Hausarbeit zum Referatsthema.
This course delineates the early development of the novel as genre; thus we will read various short, exemplary novels from the 16th to the 18th century, partly in extract. With Baldwin's "Beware the Cat" (1533), the first English novel proper, the genre exhibits from the very outset a surprising narrative sophistication. Drawing upon older traditions of the spiritual autobiography, romance (Hellenistic and medieval), epic, rhetorical dialogue and earlier novels (picaresque and/or allegorical) on the continent, the English novel demonstrates considerably different styles of writing. The scope opened up by this stylistic versatility and looseness of form ensured the steady rise of the genre. Two of our texts further exploit these features: Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1722) manages the simulation of authenticity (verisimilitude) almost to the point of a hoax by embedding diary extracts, lists and similar documentary forms of writing. Aphra Behn's picaresque "The Fair Jilt" (1688) under the guise of similar journalistic authenticity, employs the quicksands of fact vs. fiction and the Restoration readers' greed for crime, sex, and the gory to startling effect. Richardson's sentimental bestsellers "Pamela" (1740) and "Clarissa" (1748) finally establish the epistolary novel at its most seemingly intimate and authentic. Here we will have to restrict ourselves to extracts from these very substantial texts to consider the narrative strategies developed and employed by this form of the novel. There will be tests in this course to establish your knowledge of the texts under discussion. A reader of Baldwin's novel, Behn's novella, and the extracts from Richardson will be provided at the beginning of term; students may also obtain their own copy of Baldwin's texts by downloading the EEBO version (second edition!) from a library computer (caveat: the last pages of the EEBO scan are barely legible).
