Module description
‘Fiction has, and must keep, a private address,’ wrote Eudora Welty in her essay ‘Must the Novelist Crusade?’, ‘for life is lived in a private place; where it means anything is inside the mind and inside the heart.’ Almost from its origins, the novel has been thought of as a form of literature which both documents and celebrates human subjectivity. This module will read the emergence of the novel form alongside questions of human cognition and consciousness to ask why the association between minds and fiction first emerged, and what has happened to this association since.
For almost three hundred years the novel has been the dominant literary form within European literary culture. Yet the origins of the form are decidedly messy: novels are hybrid creations, thrown together from a range of different literary sources and genres. One of the central claims made by theorists of the novel, from Ian Watt to Franco Moretti, is that the form in some sense mirrors (or even goes to create) modern human subjectivity. ‘Literature is a record of human consciousness,’ argued David Lodge in Consciousness and the Novel, ‘the richest and most comprehensive we have….The novel is arguably man's most successful effort to describe the experience of individual human beings moving through space and time.’ This module will both present and interrogate these claims.
Some of the questions it will raise include: Just why has the novel been so persistent as a form? What are its historical, cultural and aesthetic origins? What can the rise and development of the novel tell us about the lives of the people who read it? And has its time passed? Particular attention will be paid to the social and cultural history of the form, and how these intersect with philosophical and political questions pertaining to human consciousness and identity.
Assessment details
1000 word critical review (15%), 2000 word essay (85%)
Educational aims & objectives
The Mind of the Novel will be a second-year module which seeks to introduce students to a range of prose fiction in English in order to get them to think about questions of genre, literary form, politics, subjectivity and style. Weekly lectures and seminars will focus on canonical and less familiar novels from (roughly) the eighteenth century to the present day. It seeks to make them better readers, and to develop a trans-historical sensibility, by following the emergence and development of a single literary form – the novel – from its origins to the present.
As a form, the novel is often said to ‘represent’ or ‘render’ or ‘portray’ consciousness in a more verisimilar manner than that achieved by other literary forms. From the emergence of the modern subject alongside the origins of the form, to narrative’s supposed ‘inward turn’ associated with literary modernism, to the fragmentation of the subject represented by postmodernist novels, the novel has since its origins been closely linked with understandings of human (and sometimes non-human) subjectivities. This module will both explore and challenge these claims, reading primary texts alongside a range of theoretical and philosophical writing in order to think about the intersections between literature, theory, and life.
As such, the module is framed as a survey course, but it will also introduce students to a range of critical and theoretical perspectives which will give them a good grounding from which to develop their close-reading and analytical skills. A particular focus will be on political and philosophical questions relating to subjectivity, consciousness, and the emergence of the modern mind.
The module would complement the level 5 module ‘The Rise of the Novel’.
Learning outcomes
After taking the module students will:
- Gain a thorough understanding of the history (political, cultural, and literary) of the novel form, as well as a wider understanding of genre formation within prose fiction and the theoretical questions which attend such developments.
- Acquire deep familiarity with a broad range of canonical and less well-known novels written in English in the last 300 years.
- Develop their close-reading and critical writing skills.
- Be familiar with a range of literary and cultural movements and contested periods including the gothic, modernism, postmodernism, etc.
Teaching pattern
1x1 hour lecture and 1x1 hour seminar weekly.