1. Help students develop an informed and sophisticated understanding of a selection of Renaissance and 18th-century works of fiction. It allows for the detailed study of prose romances and tales from the sixteenth  and seventeenth centuries, and als o of the version of ‘Romance’ most popular in the late eighteenth century: the ‘Gothic novel’, with which the period was especially fascinated.
2. Enhance students'' understanding of the history of prose fiction and the emergence of the ‘novel’ as a literary form, and the module will examine works by a number of writers from George Gascoigne and Thomas Nashe to Samuel  Richardson and Ann Radcliffe.
3. Address how prose narrative across both periods relates to issues of gender, identity, and the ‘self’ as well as the stuff of sensationalism, and it asks why, for  example, ‘Romance’ and later the novel have traditionally been considered  ‘feminine’ – and not always reputable – forms.
4. Develop critical readings of a selection of Renaissance and 18th-century fictions in relevant literary, cultural, historical and critical contexts .
5. Advance students'' critical  understanding of literary history, and also of some related aspects of cultural and social history, over the course of both the Renaissance and eighteenth-century periods.
6. Develop students'' critical awareness of the problems and i nsights raised by an interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature in the contexts both of the Renaissance and of the eighteenth century.

To demonstrate an enhanced ability to read and engage critically with literary and, where relevant, historical and cultural sources for both the Renaissance and eighteenth-century periods.

Primary texts for this module may include: Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (Book VI only); Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller; Sir Philip Sidney’s (Old) Arcadia; John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress; Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe; Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones; Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield; Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Books 1-4 only); and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. Selections from other texts and sources may also be provided. Most texts are available in Penguin/World’s Classics editions. For early fictions, especially useful is An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction, ed. Paul Salzman (Oxford UP/World’s Classics, 2009): this has Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller, alongside other key Elizabethan prose fictions and romances Most texts are available in Penguin/World’s Classics editio ns. Especially useful is An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction, ed. Paul Salzman (OxfordUP/World’s Classics, 2009): this contains both Gascoigne’s The Adventures of Master F.J. and Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller. Resources such as Literature Online and EEBO will also be available.

Seminar - Group discussion of texts

6 x 2 hours