Proseminar: The Beginnings of the English Novel

SS 1997 - Nestvold

16.4. Introduction: Course requirements, how to do oral reports and term papers, assignment of oral report topics

23.4. Introduction to the theory of the novel
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Ch. 1, "Realism and the Novel Form"
Oral report: Lukács, Theorie des Romans

30.4. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
The figure of the narrator; narrative style; "realism"
Oral report: "The rise of the woman novelist" (Jane Spencer)

7.5. Questions of race, class and gender in Oroonoko
Oral report: Moira Ferguson, Subject to Others (Chapter on Behn)

14.5. Oroonoko and the question of genre
Oral report: Spengemann, "The Earliest American Novel"

21.5 Pfingstferien

28.5. Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
The narrator and her "author"; questions of reliability
Oral report: Watt, ch. 4, "Defoe as novelist: Moll Flanders"

4.6. The "Augustan Age" and politics of literary exclusion; Defoe and his contemporaries
Oral report: The Augustan Age

11.6. Realism, capitalism and colonialism in the works of Defoe and Behn
Oral report: Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel

18.6. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
POV, style, introductory chapters; Fielding's theory of prose fiction
Oral report: Fielding's preface to Joseph Andrews

25.6. Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson and the traditions of the comic and psychological novel
Oral report: Samuel Richardson, Pamela

2.7. The structure of Tom Jones; characterization
Oral report: Watt on Fielding

9.7. Conclusion: The figure of the "author" in Behn, Defoe and Fielding; realism, capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy in the novel.
Plus: Final words on how to write the term paper.


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