Module Descriptors
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL: FORMING FICTION FROM DEFOE TO AUSTEN
ENGL40472
Key Facts
Faculty of Arts and Creative Technologies
Level 4
15 credits
Contact
Leader: Catherine Burgass
Email: C.J.Burgass@staffs.ac.uk
Hours of Study
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities: 24
Independent Study Hours: 126
Total Learning Hours: 150
Assessment
  • MID-TERM ASSIGNMENT weighted at 30%
  • ESSAY 2000 WORDS weighted at 70%
Module Details
Module Resources
Library holdings and electronic resources
Course pack
Module Additional Assessment Details
Assessment will include a short exercise mid-term and 2,000 word essay

Key Information Set Data:
100% Coursework
Module Learning Strategies
Alternate weeks lecture/seminar and workshop.

Key Information Set Data:
16% Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity
84% Guided Independent Study
Module Texts
Armstrong, N. (1987) Desire and Domestic Fiction. Oxford University Press.
Seager, N. (2012) The Rise of the Novel. Palgrave Macmillan.
Watt, I. (1957) The Rise of the Novel. Pimlico.
Module Indicative Content
The course will investigate the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century in its socio-historical context. We will study key modes such as the picaresque and epistolary, consider the development of literary realism, the persistence of romance and the immediate response of pastiche and parody. We will connect these various eighteenth-century modes to more modern and contemporary forms of fiction as well as introducing the idea of a developing and shifting critical narrative.

Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722)
Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740)
Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (1742)
Lawrence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey (1768)
Fanny Burney, Evelina (1778)
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811)