Forms of Literature: Inventing the Novel

A course about reading for writers and a course about writing for readers. The first novels in English were written around 1700 and soon became the most popular literary form. We study the novel's evolution from early experiments like Robinson Crusoe to the genre-making masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. How do key aspects of the novelist's craft emerge: voice, point of view, setting, character, and plot? We'll learn how novels are made, and we'll come to understand why they were made then and what novels did that no other literary form had been able to do. Each week, we do short creative writing exercises.