A woman reading a novel. (Image courtesy of anna_t's on flickr.)
Instructor(s)
Ina Lipkowitz
MIT Course Number
21L.471
As Taught In
Spring 2009
Level
Undergraduate
Course Description
Course Features
Course Description
In this class, you will read, think about, and (I hope) enjoy important examples of what has become one of the most popular literary genres today, if not the most popular: the novel. Some of the questions we will consider are: Why did so many novels appear in the eighteenth century? Why were they—and are they—called novels? Who wrote them? Who read them? Who narrates them? What are they likely to be about? Do they have distinctive characteristics? What is their relationship to the time and place in which they appeared? How have they changed over the years? And, most of all, why do we like to read them so much?
Other Versions
Other OCW Versions
OCW has published multiple versions of this subject. 
- 21L.471 Major English Novels (Spring 2004)
- 21L.471 Major English Novels: Reading Romantic Fiction (Spring 2002)
Archived versions: 