Popular Fiction by Women

I’m so very much looking forward to EN426 this term! We had what I thought was an excellent first class last night, though the first portion was livelier than the second–of course, we were discussing Haywood at the beginning, and I modeled a sample presentation on Backscheider & Richetti’s Popular Fiction by Women in the second. I was struck by how observant my students were, and how able they seemed to be at keeping previous discussion points in mind to inflect and shape later ideas. We’ll be reading Defoe’s Moll Flanders next, and coupling that with either Trumbach or Stone as historical context. One of the things I’m going to have to keep in mind as the term progresses, however, is that very few in the class have encountered much early literature, and much less from the 18th century; this means that I’ll potentially have to rethink the secondary/supplementary readings. We’ll see what the first journal pages bring, though, and that will give me a better sense of how the second half of class registered.