Postgraduate Course: The Novel and the Modern Self, 1688-1790 (ENLI11286)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course is designed to give an overview of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century fiction. This period, in which the novel is often said to 'rise', was also a period of radical social change. Colonial expansion, an incipiently capitalist economy, and the division of public and private spheres all drive literary examinations of personhood. As we think about what makes the novel the novel, we will also take account of the social and historical context of early fiction. We will be exploring the relationships among literacy, genre, gender, economics, colonialism, metropolitan social realignments, individualism and the self in eighteenth-century fiction and its readership. |
| Course description |
An introductory seminar will sketch the theoretical and historical framework within which we understand the novel in English in this period. Then two weeks are devoted to the fiction of Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood, and two to fictions of the middle-class selfhood often identified with 'the rise of the novel' as such, by Defoe and Richardson, with their lower-class heroines exercising self-determination both narrative and either economic (Moll Flanders) or moral (Pamela). In the second half of the course students will have the chance to give sustained attention to two texts in which this version of the novel, and the autonomous 'modern self' which it dramatises and celebrates, is subject to critique: Henry Fielding's third-person masterpiece Tom Jones and the self-scrutinising first-person narration of Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. The course ends with the reestablishment of the domestic novel with a renewed focus on the woman author (and the female narrator) in Frances Burney's Evelina.
Indicative reading list for 26/27 AY:
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko and Other Writings. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: World's Classics, 2009.
Essential:
Burney, Frances. Evelina. Ed. Edward A. Bloom and Vivien Jones. Oxford: World's Classics, 2008.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. Ed. G.A. Starr and Linda Bree. Oxford: World's Classics, 2011.
Fielding, Henry. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. Ed. Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005.
Richardson, Samuel. Pamela. Oxford: World's Classics, 2008.
Sterne, Lawrence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Ed. Ian Campbell Ross. Oxford: World's Classics, 2009.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
100% final essay (4,000 words)
[meets LOs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5] |
| Feedback |
1. Students will receive formative feedback on a proposal for the essay, including an indicative bibliography of secondary sources, which they will submit in week 7 according to the standard MScT option-course timetable
2. Students are encouraged to meet with the course organiser during drop-in hours or at another pre-arranged time for verbal feedback in advance of, and following, assignment submission. Students with specified learning adjustments that allow for submissions of essay plans in progress are expressly encouraged to submit these to the course organiser.
3. The final essay will be returned with the usual high-quality feedback. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Formulate arguments based on academic literature and source material
- Tailor their arguments and findings for particular audiences through writing
- Identify and characterise the modes of prose fiction in English in this period
- Understand the relation of prose fiction in English in this period to its social and intellectual context
- Relate prose fiction in English in this period to conceptions of modernity and selfhood
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
This course provides practice in critical and historical thinking, and in forming and articulating critical judgement (generic cognitive skills); and in the explanation and exchange of critical judgements in the context of constructive debate (communication skills). Those who complete the course will be better at presenting evidence and arguing for their ideas, and at listening to others' arguments for different ideas, in a calm, respectful and rational manner (autonomy, accountability and working with others). |
| Keywords | Novel,Fiction,Eighteenth Century,Modernity,Selfhood,the Individual |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Rebecca Tierney-Hynes
Tel: (0131 6)50 8410
Email: r.tierneyhynes@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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