MEG-03: British Novel

The novel as a popular literary form took shape in Britain in the eighteenth century. Many reasons have been put forward for the growth of the novel in Britain during this period. These include the improvements in printing technology, the growing market for books, and the emergence of a newly literate middle class. Book clubs and circulating libraries also helped in the popularity of the new literary form.The eighteenth century produced prominent English novelists such as Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Tobias Smollett. However, it was in the nineteenth century that the English novel in its classical form reached its height, at the hands of writers like Jane Austen, W.M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. Among some of the prominent twentieth century British novelists are E. M. Forster, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Joseph Conrad. This course introduces the learner to some of the finest writings of these novelists. A study of this course will help the learner gain a sense of the development of the British novel from its beginnings in the eighteenth century till the later decades of the twentieth century. Apart from providing a broad overview of the great tradition of the British novel, the course takes up selected novels for close reading and detailed study. The novels selected for detailed analysis are Tom Jones (Henry Fielding); Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen); Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte); Great Expectations (Charles Dickens); Middlemarch (George Eliot); Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad); A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man (James Joyce); A Passage to India (E. M. Forster) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark). The course also includes readings of these novels from different critical perspectives such as the feminist, deconstructionist, new historicist, and the post-colonial.