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CS92PROD
The Comic Novel from Fielding to Fielding
ENGL 312
Fall 2010 not offered

This course examines the tradition of the comic novel from the origins of the novel itself--in Henry Fielding's TOM JONES and Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE--to Helen Fielding's blockbuster BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY. We will trace the ways later writers drew on and rebelled against the two models for the comic novel that TOM JONES and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE established: a narrator who is colloquial and digressive or reclusive and ironic; a plot that is episodic and fragmentary or unified and spare; an ethical scheme that relies on satire and social commentary or upon poetic justice and the implications of theme. While enjoying these very funny books on their own terms, we will also take seriously their experiments with narrative form; their complicated relationship to the categories of the novel, comedy, realism, and modernism; and their engagement with the social, economic, and political tensions of the world they depict, however hilariously.

Essential Capabilities: Writing
This is a writing-intensive course.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: None

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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