ENL 5246 Spring 2020 Eckert

This course explores the development of the novel in the Romantic period. As printing technologies changed, literacy rates increased, and reading habits changes, the novel gained new prominence in popular culture and literary sphere. Throughout the course we will examine the explosion of novels by considering how and why different subgenres—gothic fiction, the novel of manners, romance, political novel, science fiction—emerged and adapted throughout the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. We’ll read novels by a variety of female authors, including Frances Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, and the Brontë sisters. We will explore the texts we read through the lenses of reception studies and book history, cultural studies, and new historicism.