Kathy Larsen
Rome 769
klarsen@gwu.edu
Office hours: T/R 12:00-12:45 and by appointment
Course Description
While one may reasonably expect a description of this course to be
fairly straightforward - we will be reading novels written during the
eighteenth century - many of the underlying questions this simple
statement riases are anything but straightforward. To begin with, what is
a novel? Who were they written by and for whom? And the Eighteenth
Century? What was it like? What issues informed it? Why did the novel
(whatever we decided that is) come to fruition during this period? Along
the way we will also be considering issues of voice - who speaks, who
remains silent, what voices have found currency in our own period, and
why. In order to begin to answer some of these questions each student will
undertake a research project investigating some aspect of eighteenth
century life that he or she feels has a direct and dynamic bearing on the
texts we will be reading for this class.