| Unit name | Early Modern Prose Fiction |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL20018 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Dr. Cheeke |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
From social satire to early science fiction, this unit will focus on a range of prose texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including works by the ‘university wits’ Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe, the playful philosopher and statesman Thomas More, and pioneering women such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Wroth. We will pay close attention to the historical and cultural contexts in which the texts were written and published, and use this to think about how each text raises questions about genre, authorship, the English vernacular, and the limits of fiction. Although our critical attention is often most frequently directed at the drama and poetry of the Renaissance, scholarship in recent years has been highly sensitive to the prose fiction of this period, not only because it can be read as the forerunner of the modern novel, but because it is sophisticated, innovative, and experimental in its own right.
To introduce students to a range of Early Modern prose fiction and to develop their critical skills in analysing such work and placing it within its historical context.
1 x 2hr seminar per week
2 summative essays:1x 2000 words (33%); 1x 4000 words (67%). Both elements will assess students’ critical skills in analysing Early Modern prose fiction and placing it within its historical context; along with their skills in assessing, presenting, analysing and evaluating complex ideas and arguments, and in researching and writing.
A key primary text will be:
• An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction, ed. Paul Salzman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)
Secondary Reading:
• Conn Liebler, Naomi, ed. Early Modern Prose Fiction: The Cultural Politics of Reading (London: Routledge, 2006) • Crewe, Jonathan V., Unredeemed Rhetoric (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) • Halasz, Alexandra, The Marketplace of Print: Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) • Mentz, Steve, Romance for Sale in Early Modern England: The Rise of Prose Fiction (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) • Relihan, Constance, ed. Framing Elizabethan Fictions (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1996) • Salzman, Paul, English Prose Fiction 1558-1700: A Critical History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985)
