239813 Jesters and Rhetoricians. Elizabethan Prose Fiction (S) (SoSe 2013)

For some time the standard view of the history of the English novel was that it was initiated in the 18th century by such writers as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding. There was, however, a sprawling market for prose fiction some two hundred years before that. In the Elizabethan period, many writers produced prose fiction, experimenting with formats, genres, language and style. In this seminar, we will read a selection of Elizabethan predecessors of the novel, covering a large diversity of texts - popular and educated, brief and extensive, comic and tragic. We will also explore the changes in cultural, social and ideological contexts which gave rise to the new medium of printed prose narrative in the Elizabethan era.

Literaturangaben

A reader containing all texts will be available around the middle of March. Most texts will be taken from
Paul Salzman (ed.): An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction (Oxford World's Classics). Oxford: OUP, 2008, which is therefore worth buying.