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CS92PROD
The Comic Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century
ENGL 255
Spring 2022 not offered

This course examines the tradition of the comic novel from the origins of the novel itself to the early twentieth century. We will begin by examining the two models for the comic novel that emerged at the beginning of our period, Fielding's TOM JONES and Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: 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 on poetic justice and the implications of theme. We will then trace the ways later writers drew on and rebelled against those two modes. 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.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (ENGL)

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
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