MENMD2ECF: Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Bunyan to Smollett
Credits: 20 credits (10 ECTS credits)
Course Director: Dr Peter Merchant
This module supplies a showcase for a remarkably rich range of novels, allowing students to sample the work not just of Bunyan and Smollett themselves but of several other novelists also active between 1678 and 1771. It promotes reflection upon the historical rhythms that connect novels separated in time perhaps by several decades, and upon the ways in which novelists echo or transform the themes and emphases of their predecessors; and it builds upon the core Level 4 module “Theory and the Novel” by encouraging continued theoretical attention to the various styles of telling, and different ways of seeing, that the novel as a genre accommodates.
The novels highlighted by this module challenge us to think about gender, race, and social class. They feature thrilling themes of survival and patience in adversity, adventure and pursuit, fortune-hunting and social climbing. A strong vein of humour such as Sheridan tapped into in The Rivals—but zanier and more unbuttoned than his—runs through them too. The list is likely to contain all or most of the following texts: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko;
John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress; Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders; Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews; Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield; Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker; Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.
Assessment will be by a short piece of 500 words (10%) plus a longer essay of 2000 words (40%) plus a ‘takeaway’ examination similar to the one set this year for Theory & the Novel (50%).