ENGLISH 237: Before Novels

Course Description

What is at stake when we identify ancient, medieval, or early modern works as proto-novelistic, especially when such texts encompass the wondrous, the mystical, the factual, and/or didactic? What do the "prosaic" dimensions of prose fiction disclose about our conceptions or history, truth, or reality? Readings for this course may include (in English translation where applicable) Lucian, A True History; Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe; Cervantes, Don Quixote; Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller; Hooke, Micrographia; Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year; Austen, Persuasion.