ENL 4112 Ward Fall 2022

Yes!!! There were novels before those written by Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters! This course is intended to introduce you to a variety of eighteenth-century works that preceded later novels like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre that might be more familiar to English majors. ENL 4112 will enable you to develop a familiarity not only with these early novels, but also with the material and cultural circumstances in which they were produced.

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.

Required Texts*
Oroonoko (1688), Aphra Behn
Fantomina (1725), Eliza Haywood
Moll Flanders (1722), Daniel Defoe
Pamela (1740), Samuel Richardson
The Adventures of David Simple (1744) and Volume the Last (1753), Sarah Fielding
A Simple Story, Elizabeth Inchbald
Caleb Williams (1794), William Godwin
Maria; or the Wrongs of Woman (1798), Mary Wollstonecraft
The Woman of Colour (1808)

This course fulfills the Genre (Novel) Requirement AND the Pre-1800 requirement