Negotiating Identities in Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Part 1) - Detailseite

SE I: Negotiating Identities in Eighteenth-Century Fiction

SE II: Female Identities in Frances Burney’s Novels

This module combines two seminars both addressing questions of identity in eighteenth-century fiction. In this age of economic and social dynamics (“modernization”), of the enlightenment and sentimentalism, the newly emerging genre of the novel negotiated manifold issues pertaining to identity such as individuals’ identity by birth or by marriage, gender identities, social status and performance, the formation of a socially acceptable identity through education, identity confusion, our sense of self and moral self-consciousness, and so forth. Significantly, women came to the fore, and perhaps like no other, Frances Burney’s novels – still very readable and enjoyable today – pursue the question of female identity often under threat.

The two seminars are designed to intertwine thematically, but each can also be taken individually. Seminar I offers more of a glimpse of the diversity of literary negotiations of identity, while Seminar II undertakes to study two novels by Frances Burney in close detail.

Primary Reading Seminar I:

• Samuel Richardson: Pamela; or: Virtue Rewarded (1740)
• Henry Fielding: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)*
• b.a.

*Fielding’s novel is rather long. Advice on which chapters to focus on and what to possibly skip will be given at the beginning of term.

Primary Reading Seminar II:

• Frances Burney: Evelina: Or The History of A Young Lady's Entrance into the World(1778)

• —. Cecilia: Or, Memoirs of an Heiress. London (1782)

Please obtain your own copies of these novels.