ENL 4112 Spring 2018 Ward

This course is intended to introduce you to a variety of eighteenth-century novels and to enable you to develop a familiarity with the material and cultural circumstances in which these novels were produced. From Aphra Behn’s novella about the royal slave Oroonoko, to Samuel Richardson’s germinal Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded and Henry Fielding’s satirical response Shamela; from Sarah Fielding’s introduction to the Man of Feeling in David Simple to the radical novels of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, all of these works provide a glimpse into eighteenth-century British life and manners, as well as novelists’ efforts to shape the worlds they depict. Throughout the semester, you will be called on to discuss the texts in class and to write about them in papers and on exams. In order to successfully fulfill the paper and exam requirements, you must exhibit not only a mastery of the course content (i.e., of the novels themselves and the background information provided in lectures, class discussions, and independent research), but also the ability to communicate your ideas using the critical and analytical techniques that characterize literary and cultural studies.