Romantic Novel

Catalog description

In Britain, the years 1780 to 1833 witnessed the blossoming of Romanticism in poetry and expository prose, and historically the works that are seen as most embodying the literary movement are taken usually from these two genres. However, the Romantic Period was also significant in the continuing development of the novel, with the advancement or emergence of notable sub-genres such as gothic novels (of Radcliffe, Lewis and others), jacobin novels (of Godwin, Wollstonecraft and others), novels of comic domestic realism (of Austen, Edgeworth and others), satirical novels (of Peacock and Hogg), historical novels (of Scott), orientalist fiction (of Beckford), and quasi-science fiction (of Mary Shelley). What connection, if any, do any of the important novels of the period, and the genres they represent, have with traditional Romanticism? One central focus of the course will be an attempt to answer this question, and to help with this, a small sampling of poetry and expository prose works will attend our readings of the novels. A concurrent emphasis of the course will be to consider these novels in all their individual complexity -- beyond their possible connections with Romantic texts of other genres -- in order to give a fuller picture of the era's myriad and conflicting concerns. In this way, the novels in this course will be studied for the ways they speak to the various social, political, and philosophical contexts out of which they sprang, in keeping with Richard Maxwell's understanding of the novel as 'a form deeply open to politics and history'. One or more novel by each the following authors will likely be considered: Jane Austen, William Beckford, Maria Edgeworth, William Godwin, James Hogg, Matthew Lewis, Charles Maturin, Thomas Love Peacock, Ann Radcliffe, Walter Scott, Mary Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Critical essays on individual works, the novel genre…