In this class, we will read a sequence of GREAT novels in order to pursue the following questions. 1) what is the relationship between the novel as a literary genre, and our experience of romantic love? 2) why was the novel “born” in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries, just as ideas about love and marriage were shifting? 3) What specific techniques do fiction writers use to shape our ideas about love? The books we will read will include novels from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century such as Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse of Cleves; Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess; Daniel Defoe, Roxana; Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote; Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; contemporary novels that reflect on this tradition, such as Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot, and some scholarly works that will help us understand this tradition. We will learn new methods of research, and practice an interlocking set of research skills, so that everyone will exit this class with an awesome final research paper, as well as some transferable skills and an amplified appreciation for the novel as a literary genre.

This course satisfies the following CURRENT English major/minor requirements: Pre-1830, Pre-1900

This course satisfies the following NEW English major/minor requirements: Regions (Americas, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland), Time (Contemporary/Modern)

Course Requirements:

Lively attendance and participation, engaged reading, and a sequence of fun, hands-on research assignments (an annotated bibliography, a text annotation, the creation of an online text archive, text mining, data visualization), that will all feed into your original final research paper (12-15 pages).

Intended Audience:

This class is great for Junior and Senior English Majors who wish to fulfill some of their requirements, but it is open to any students interested in reading great novels and excited about learning some cutting-edge research skills they can transfer to many arenas.