reading list: 18th c. British novel

[heresluck]

As requested by brisingamenThe guiding principle I'm currently interested in for this class is the idea of the 18th c. as a sort of genre soup. All sorts of disparate genre elements (prose romances, the epistolary tradition, epic, crime journalism, satire, political and historical drama and narratives, travel narrative, picaresque, memoir, spiritual

Comments

[gwynnega]

Terrific list. I may choose a few titles for my upcoming MFA syllabus!

[heresluck]

Oh wow -- you get to choose your syllabus? Nifty. What other sorts of stuff are you planning to put on there?

[gwynnega]

We get assigned a few things, but mostly we get to design our own reading lists. I have a long list I've been compiling of books for the next semesters. Some that I'm thinking of including this time are:

Samuel Delany - Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

something by Angela Carter (I read The Bloody Chamber last semester, so maybe another book of stories from her Collected Stories, or Nights at the Circus)

Frank O'Hara's plays

Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? (which everyone seems to be reading these days!)

Simone de Beauvoir - All Men Are Mortal

Leslie Marmon Silko - Ceremony

maybe some Dawn Powell, Edmund White, Hanif Kureishi

I'm seriously thinking of including Tristram Shandy. Last semester I mostly studied poetry (and mainly 20th-century poetry), so I am in the mood for novels, and in particular, old novels!

[heresluck]

You gotta read Tristram! It's hilarious. Also, it's all about writing.

I like both Nights at the Circus and Ceremony very much. I did enjoy CYFH?, enough to want to read a good deal more of Trollope at some point. Oh, and Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia is a delight. Intimacy is also interesting, and shorter. *g*

I haven't read All Men Are Mortal, just A Woman Destroyed (which I liked very much). I still haven't read any Edmund White, though I've been meaning to for, let's see, about seven years now. And I haven't even heard of Dawn Powell and am feeling very embarrassed about it; why's she on the list and what has she written?

[river_boat]

[sneaks in]

I'd *totally* take this class if it was offered here at my university. I love your concept of how the 18th century novel differs from the novel of the 19th century - I took a year-long module on "The European Novel" last year (which basically looked at the history and development of the novel from the late 17th century to the early 20th) and in the context of what I learned in that class, your "genre soup" idea is really interesting and seems to work very well.

--
William Godwin, Caleb Williams (1794)

Godwin has no sense of humor.
--

Oh good. Now I'm really motivated to do this week's reading.

[/sneaks out]

[heresluck]

Hey there -- nice to hear from you again!

I'd *totally* take this class if it was offered here at my university.

Yay! Since of course my big goal is to put together a class that students would actually sign up for.

I'm jealous that you got to take a year-long course on the history of the novel. Wow. That would be unbelievably fun to take, or teach. Of course, I could teach a year-long class just on 19th c. British fiction, so I don't know how I'd possibly pack it all into a year. It'd have to be thematic in some way rather than just historical.

And hey, I like Caleb Williams! It's just not the hilarious romp that the comic novels are, 'cause, well, it's not comic. It's still interesting, and frequently very creepy. Plus? Mary Shelley's dad! Cool!

::wanders away burbling happily about geekish things::

[se_parsons]

At my university, we were assigned the unabridged "Clarissa" to be read BEFORE we got to class. It was discussed later, but we had all summer to read it, seeing we'd signed up for the class the spring before. If you have the luxury of doing this, or assigning it in a two-week break at least, do it. Then you can have them read stuff ABOUT "Clarissa" for class. We had to compare the abridged and unabridged and read "The Rape of Clarissa" by Terry Eagleton. "Clarissa" is great fodder for discussion, of course, and comedy GOLD.

It is lunchtime, excuse me while I go and set out my paltry meal of gruel and water atop my coffin. Then I shall return to my regularly scheduled weeping and writing of voluminous letters to all (the little blots are the stains of my salty tears, of course) about my ruined state.

We also read "Maria, or the Wrongs of Women" by Mary Wollstonecraft. It's short and lurid and balances "Clarissa" nicely. She's also another big name.

I'm glad to see you've got the Behn on here. I pimp her to ALL my friends.

[heresluck]

You're absolutely right: reading Clarissa over the summer would be ideal. Unfortunately, it's not something I can rely on; schools don't all do enrollment the same way, for one thing, and not all curriculum committees would approve of a requirement that could significantly lower enrollment. So while I can plan a syllabus that would do that, I also need multiple fallback plans

[heresluck]

You're welcome -- and I love that characterization of Richardson.

[moonwhip]

I came here via melymbrosia's link, and I have to applaud your list. I took an 18th century novels class during my first semester at school. We read most of these books, as well as a few others -- Pilgrim's Progress for background, I think, and A Sentimental Journey rather than Tristram Shandy (unfortunately). I agree that Gulliver's Travels could be left out -- we also took half a class period to talk about A Modest Proposal, and that left me feeling delighted by Swift rather than bored. We also read The Romance of the Forest right before Northanger Abbey, which was wonderful; it made all the digs at gothic novels much more accessible.

Thanks for this list -- I'm looking forward to reading the novels we skipped when I get a chance. :)

[heresluck]

Oh man, you missed Tristram? That's criminal. I'm with you on Swift -- that's exactly the reason I waffle. He'd obviously go on a general 18th c. lit syllabus, but the novel? Eh.

How was Romance of the Forest? I read it years ago and hadn't really considered teaching it, but it's certainly another Radcliffe option. It'd certainly go well with NA; was it fun on its own as well?

[moonwhip]

Romance of the Forest was good fun -- it's delightfully over the top at points, and provides decent examples for some of the gothic novel tropes (the idea of the sublime, helpless heroine as visual object, etc.). Reading NA right afterwards increased my affection for RotF, too, because Austen tweaks the genre so well.