Guía docente de Orígenes y Evolución de la Novela Inglesa desde el Siglo XVI al XVIII: Política, Traducción, y Discurso Periodístico (M19/56/2/7)

This course explores, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the history of prose fiction in England from the sixteenth through the first half of the eighteenth century by foregrounding the role of translation, the influence of political and scientific discourse, and the emergence of journalism in the publishing world. From the early English translations of Spanish romances of chivalry and picaresque works, to the analysis of the emerging rogue and crime fiction, to the genre of (auto)biography, this course reflects on, among others, shared narrative strategies between these genres and other discourses such as travel writing, and texts revealing of the dynamics of (proto)journalism and a burgeoning periodical literature.

• C1 level of English
• Previous knowledge of literary conventions 

• To understand the concepts of 'romance' and 'novel' in England from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century according to contemporary sources and definitions, and to reflect on critical approaches and definitions of these concepts in twentieth and twenty first-century scholarship
• To understand the social, economic, political, and literary phenomena that underlie and converge in the writing of prose fiction in England from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century, and the ways in which the genre of the novel responds to phenomena as varied as urban development, the growth in literacy, the expansion of the publishing industry, and the production and consumption of news as marketable commodities
• To understand how processes of translation from other languages into English fundamentally shaped English prose fiction and the development of the novel as a pan-European literary genre
• To understand the role of satire, the picaresque, crime fiction, u/dys-topianism, and travel writing in the consolidation of the novel as a genre
• To understand the role of letter and news writing in the establishment of the novel as a genre
• To understand and question claims of truth in, particularly, first person narrations
• To understand different uses and types of first person narration in connection with the establishment of the novel as a genre

This course provides an interdisciplinary approach to the origins and evolution of the English novel from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries with a focus on its transnational and transgeneric nature. Modern prose fiction in English will be contextualised within the contemporary political and economic discourse, and discussed in relation to the dynamics of translation, the workings of the book market, and the emergence of early journalism and other genres, including (auto)biography, travelogue, drama, and the essay.

The origins and early development of the English novel will be thus presented as an eminently interlinguistic and international phenomenon, one in which a variety of genres, from several emerging vernacular traditions, intertwine. Translations and adaptations into English of Iberian sentimental romances and romances of chivalry and picaresque works, often mediated through previous Italian and French translations and versions, underline the relevance of networks of translations and printers. The rise of the picaresque in England in turn will be approached in connection with the editorial success of rogue and crime literature, often inseparable from (auto)biography, understood as a way to fictionalise the early modern self. It will be thus seen how the resulting type of narrative prose aspired to portray, in an allegedly verisimilar fashion, complex social realities by means of a rhetoric that often overlapped with that of history and news writing, among other discourses. 

Course structure:  

• Unit 1 - Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Romances and the Modern Novel  
• Unit 2 - The English Picaresque: Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (1594)
• Unit 3 - Rogue Literature and Crime Fiction: Richard Head, Mary Carleton, and Francis Kirkman
• Unit 4 - U/dys-topianism and Travel Writing: Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing-World (1666)
• Unit 5 - Colonialism, Imperial Expansion, and the Rise of the Novel: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688)
• Unit 6 - News and Letter Writing and the Consolidation of the Novel

Syllabus and set readings:

• Unit 1 - Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Romances and the Modern Novel  

1. Session Title: "Romances of chivalry in Europe: translation and the origins of the novel". Reading assignments: selection of extracts from: Anthony Munday’s Amadis of Gaul (1590), and Thomas Shelton’s The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant, Don-Quixote of the Mancha (1612). 
2. Session Title: "Seventeenth-century definitions of romances and novels". Reading assignments: selection of extracts from Madeleine de Scudéry’s Ibrahim, or, The Illustrious Bassa (1652), Pierre-Daniel Huet’s A Treatise of Romances and their Original (1672), and William Congreve's Incognita: or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd (1692).

• Unit 2 - The English Picaresque: Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (1594) (Visiting Prof. Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex)

1. Session Title: "The Spanish picaresque in England and the English picaresque".
2. Session Title: "Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller and the early English novel".  
3. Reading assignments: Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (1594).

• Unit 3 - Rogue Literature and Crime Fiction: Richard Head, Mary Carleton, and Francis Kirkman

1. Session Title: "Rogue literature and the picaresque: Richard Head's The English Rogue (1665)". Reading assignments: selection of extracts from: Richard Head's The English Rogue Described in the Life of Meriton Latroon, a Witty Extravagant. Being a Compleat History of the Most Eminent Cheats of Both Sexes (1665).
2. Session Title: "Rogue literature and crime fiction: Mary Carleton’s autobiography". Reading assignments: selection of extracts from: The Case of Madam Mary Carleton, Lately Stiled the German Princess, Truely Stated with an Historical Relation of her Birth, Education, and Fortunes (1663), and Francis Kirkman's The Unlucky Citizen Experimentally Described in the Various Misfortunes of an Unlucky Londoner (1673) and The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled. Being a Full Account of the Birth, Life, Most Remarkable Actions, and Untimely Death of Mary Carleton, Known by the Name of the German Princess (1673).

• Unit 4 - U/dys-topianism and Travel Writing: Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing-World (1666)  

1. Session Title: "U/dys-topianism and travel writing (I): Margaret Cavendish's The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World (1666)". Reading assignments: Margaret Cavendish's The Description of a New Blazing World (1666).
2. Session Title: "U/dys-topianism and travel writing (II): Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726)". Reading assignments: selection of extracts from Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).

• Unit 5 - Colonialism, Imperial Expansion, and the Rise of the Novel: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) (Visiting Prof. Gerd Bayer, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)

1. Session Title: "Raising/Framing the Novel: Paratext and Narrative in Behn's Oroonoko (1688)". Reading assignments: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688), and excerpts from Aphra Behn's Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister (1684-1687) (these will be provided - uploaded to Prado).
2. Session Title: "Staging/Exposing Otherness in Behn's Oroonoko". Reading assignments: excerpts from the anonymous prose fiction Peppa (1689) (these will be provided - uploaded to Prado).

• Unit 6 - News and Letter Writing and the Consolidation of the Novel

1. Session Title: "Periodicals and the modern novel". Reading assignments: selection of extracts from Ben Jonson's The Staple of News (1626) and Daniel Defoe’s The Storm (1704), Henry Fielding’s “On the Untruthfulness of News Writers” (1736), articles 411-421 from The Spectator and a selection of articles from Book I of The Female Spectator.

Primary sources

• [Anonymous translation of Pierre-Daniel Huet's]. A Treatise of Romances and their Original by Monsieur Huet. London: R. Battersby, 1672.
• Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko, and Other Writings. Edited by Paul Salzmanc. London: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Carleton, Mary. The Case of Madam Mary Carleton, Lately Stiled the German Princess, Truely Stated with an Historical Relation of her Birth, Education, and Fortunes. London: printed for Sam: Speed, 1663.
• Cavendish, Margaret. A Description of the Blazing World. Edited by Sara H. Mendelson. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2016.
• Cogan, Henry, trans. Ibrahim, or, The Illustrious Bassa an Excellent New Romance. London: Humphrey Moseley, William Bentley, and Thomas Heath, 1652.  
• Congreve, William. Incognita: or, Love and Duty Reconcil'd is Discussed. London: Peter Buck, 1692.
• Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe: An Authoritarive Text, Context, Criticism. Edited by Michael Shinagel. New York; London Norton, 1994.
• Defoe, Daniel. The Storm [Or, a Collection of the most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters which Happen’d in the Late Dreadful Tempest, both by Sea and Land]. Edited by Richard Hamblyn. London: Penguin, 2005.
• Fielding, Henry. New Essays by Henry Fielding: His Contributions to the Craftsman (1734-1739) and Other Early Journalism, ed. Martin C.Battestin. Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1989. 
• Haywood, Eliza. Anti-Pamela, or, Feign'd Innocence Detected. Edited by Catherine Ingrassia. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2004. 
• Haywood, Eliza. Selections from The Female Spectator. Edited by Patricia Meyer Spacks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Head, Richard. The English Rogue Described in the Life of Meriton Latroon, a Witty Extravagant. Being a Compleat History of the Most Eminent Cheats of Both Sexes. London: Henry Marsh, 1665.
• Jonson, Ben. The Staple of News. Edited by Anthony Parr. Manchester, UK; New York: Manchester University Press, 1988.
• Kidwelly, John Davies. The Life and Adventures of Buscón the Witty Spaniard. London: J.M., 1657.
• Kirkman, Francis. The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled. Being a Full Account of the Birth, Life, Most Remarkable Actions, and Untimely Death of Mary Carleton, Known by the Name of the German Princess. London: Peter Parker, 1673.
• Kirkman, Francis. The Unlucky Citizen Experimentally Described in the Various Misfortunes of an Unlucky Londoner. London: Anne Johnson, 1673.
• Mabbe, James. The Rogue; or, The Life of Guzman de Alfarache. Edited by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly. London: Constable and Co. Ltd., New York, A.A. Knopf, 1924. 
• Mabbe, James. The Spanish Bawd. Edited by José María Pérez Fernández. London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2013.
• Munday, Anthony. Amadis de Gaule. Edited by Helen Moore. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.
• Nashe, Thomas. The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works. Edited by J. B. Steane. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972.
• Rowland, D. trans. The Pleasaunt Historie of Lazarillo de Tormes. Edited by J. E. V. Crofts. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1924.
• Shelton, Thomas, trans. The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-errant, Don-Quixote of the Mancha. Translated out of the Spanish. London: William Stansby, 1612.
• Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels: Based on the 1726 Text: Contexts, Criticism. Edited by Albert J. Rivero. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2002.

Secondary sources

• Álvarez-Recio, Leticia. “Translations of Spanish Chivalry Works in the Jacobean Book Trade: Shelton’s Don Quixote in the Light of Anthony Munday's Publications”. 33.5 (2019), 691-711.
• Álvarez-Recio, Leticia. Iberian Chivalric Romance. Translations and Cultural Transmission in Early Modern England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020.
• Bald, R. C. “Francis Kirkman, Bookseller and Author”. Modern Philology 41.1 (1943), 17-32.
• Bayer, Gerd. Novel Horizons: The Genre Making of Restoration Fiction. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016.
• Beier, A.L. “On the Boundaries of New and Old Historicisms: Thomas Harman and the Literature of Roguery’, English Literary Renaissance, 33 (2003), 181–200.
• Cruz, Anne J. “Sonnes of the Rogue: Picaresque relations in England and Spain”. In Giancarlo Mariorino, ed. The Picaresque: Tradition and Displacement. Minneapolis, MN: U. of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp. 248-72.
• Davis, Lennard J. Factual Fictions: Origins of the English Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
• Doody, Margaret. The True Story of the Novel. Rutgers University Press, 1997.
• Forbes Gerhard, Sandra. Don Quixote and the Shelton Translation. Madrid: Ediciones José Purría Turantas, 1982.
• Fuchs, Barbara . Romance, The New Critical Idiom. London: Routlege, 2004.
• Fuchs, Barbara. Knowing Fictions: Picaresque Reading in the Early Modern Hispanic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
• Fuchs, Barbara. The Poetics of Piracy. Emulating Spain in English Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
• George, J. “Thomas Shelton, Translator, in 1612–1614”, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 35 (1958), 157–164.
• Greene, Jody. “Francis Kirkman’s Counterfeit Authority: Autobiography, Subjectivity, Print”. Publications of the Modern Language Association, 121.1 (2006), 17-32.
• Hamilton, Donna B. Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005.
• Hunter, J. Paul. Before Novels: Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth Century English Fiction. New York; London W.W. Norton, 1990.
• Kesson, Andy. John Lyly and Early Modern Authorship. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014.
• Kuhlisch, Tina. “The Ambivalent Rogue: Moll Flanders as Modern Pícara”, in Craig Dionne and Steve Mentz, eds. Rogues and Early Modern English Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004, pp. 337-360.
• Mayer, Robert. History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• McKeon, Michael, ed. Theory of the Novel. A Historical Approach. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
• McKeon, Michael. The Origins of the English Novel. 1600 – 1740 (Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
• McKeon, Michael. The Secret History of Domesticity. Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
• Mentz, Steve. Romance for Sale in Early Modern England: The Rise of Prose Fiction. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.
• Moore, Helen. “Admirable Inventions: Francis Kirkman and the Translation of Romance in the 1650s”. Seventeenth-Century Fiction: Text and Transmission, ed. Jacqueline Glomski and Isabelle Moreau. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 143-158.
• Newcomb, Lori Humphrew. Reading Popular Romance in Early Modern England. New York: Columbia UP, 2002.
• Pérez Fernández, José María. “Picaresque”. In Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature. Ed. Andrew Hadfield. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Pérez Fernández, José María. “Spanish Bawds and Quixotic Libraries. Adventures and Misadventures in Early English Hispanism and World Literature”. Comparative Literature, December 2016 (68:4), pp. 370-388.
• Raymond, Joad and Noah Moxham, eds. News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2016)
• Raymond, Joad. (ed.) The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, vol. 1: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
• Raymond, Joad. “News Writing”, in Andrew Hadfield (ed.), The Oxford Handbook to English Prose, c.1500-1640 (Oxford University Press, 2013), 396-414.
• Raymond, Joad. The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641-1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996; paperback edition with new preface 2005).
• Relihan, Constance, ed. Framing Elizabethan Fictions: Contemporary Approaches to Early Modern Prose Narrative. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1996.
• Salzman, Paul. “Placing Tudor Fiction”, Yearbook of English Studies 38 (2008), 136 – 149.
• Salzman, Paul. English Prose Fiction, 1558 – 1700: A Critical History. OUP, 1986.
• Samson, Alexander. “Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque in Early Modern England”. In The Oxford Handbook to English Prose 1500-1640, ed. by Andrew Hadfield. Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 121-136.
• Samson, Alexander. “Maybe Exemplary? James Mabbe’s Translation of the Exemplary Novells”. Republics of Letters, vol. 4:2, March 2015 < http://arcade.stanford.edu/rofl/maybe-exemplary-james-mabbes-translation-exemplarie-novells-1640>, accessed on 05/06/16
• Spadaccini, Nicholas. “Daniel Defoe and the Spanish Picaresque Tradition: The Case of Moll Flanders”. Ideologies and Literature: A Journal of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies (Twin Cities, MN), (2:6), 1978, 10-26.
• Ungerer, Gustav, “Mary Frith, alias Moll Cutpurse, in Life and Literature”, Shakespeare Studies, 28 (2000), 42–84.
• Ungerer, Gustav. “English Criminal Biography and Guzmán de Alfarache’s Fall from Rogue to Highwayman, Pander and Astrologer”. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 76 (1999), 189-197.
• Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Richardson, Fielding, Defoe. Chatto & Windus, 1957.

• Oxford English Dictionary: https://oed.com/
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: https://www.oxforddnb.com/ 
• Early English Books Online (EEBO): https://www.proquest.com/eebo/index 
• The British Newspaper Archive: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/   

Grading policy: 

• Attendance and participation (30%)
• In-class presentation (10%)
• One 6,000-word essay (60%)

Grading policy: 

• Attendance and participation (20%)
• In-class presentation (20%)
• One 6,000-7,000 word-essay (60%)

Grading policy: 

One 10,000-word essay 

Según establece el Artículo 15 de la Normativa de Evaluación y Calificación de la Universidad de Granada:

"El plagio, entendido como la presentación de un trabajo u obra hecho por otra persona como propio o la copia de textos sin citar su procedencia y dándolos como de elaboración propia, conllevará automáticamente la calificación numérica de cero en la asignatura en la que se hubiera detectado, independientemente del resto de las calificaciones que el estudiante hubiera obtenido. Esta consecuencia debe entenderse sin perjuicio de las responsabilidades disciplinarias en las que pudieran incurrir los estudiantes que plagien."

En línea con la normativa de la UGR expuesta en el párrafo anterior, es necesario aclarar que, al igual que con cualquier otro tipo de plagio, el incumplimiento del compromiso de autoría por parte del/de la estudiante debido a la utilización de recursos no humanos (por ejemplo, aplicaciones informáticas de Inteligencia Artificial) conllevará igualmente la calificación automática de SUSPENSO (0) en la asignatura, así como las responsabilidades disciplinarias que esta acción pueda acarrear.