ENGL 3330

Fictions of Self-Invention: The Eighteenth Century Novel

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2016-2017 Catalog.

If the Satanic fantasy is to believe ourselves "Self-begot, self-raised by our own quick'ning power," as Milton says, then the early novel is diabolical. Foundlings and orphans, abandoned wives, abducted daughters, incestuous marriages, exiled or restlessly traveling sons: early fiction imagines the possibility of socially inventing ourselves by challenging and leaving behind both the family defined by birth and a place called home. We will examine the ideology of self-invention—its promotion of individual autonomy through education, culture, sex, and economics—in such novels as Defoe's Moll Flanders, Haywood's Love in Excess, Fielding's Tom Jones, Austen's Emma. We will also examine how fiction tries to invent itself by turning to forms of realism and forgetting the history of literature.

Distribution Category (LA-AS)

When Offered Spring.

Breadth Requirement (HB)

Satisfies Requirement This course may be used as one of the three pre-1800 courses required of English majors.

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