Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

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?

Course Requirements

Required Textbooks

Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 1989. ISBN: 9780140433135. The e-text is available from Project Gutenberg.

Burney, Frances. Evelina. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780192840318. The e-text is available from Project Gutenberg.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York, NY: Penguin, 2004. ISBN: 9780192802385. The e-text and audio book are available from Project Gutenberg.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780192805621. The e-text is available from Project Gutenberg.

Eliot, George. Adam Bede. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 1980. ISBN: 9780140431216. The e-text is available from Project Gutenberg.

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. Lady Audley's Secret. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780192835208. The e-text is available from Project Gutenberg.

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d'Ubervilles. New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2003. ISBN: 9780141439594. The e-text is available from Project Gutenberg.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. ISBN: 9780156628709. The e-text is available from The University of Adelaide Library Electronic Texts Collection.

Assignments

There are two essay assignments for this course. Both essays are 7-10 pages long. The Early Novels assignment is due in Ses #13 and the 19th-20th Century Novels assignment is due in Ses #26.

MIT Literature Statement on Plagiarism

Plagiarism—use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement—is a serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution, consult the style guides available at the Writing and Communication Center and the MIT Web site on Plagiarism.

Calendar