麻省理工学院“开放式课程网页” | 文学 | 21L.471 2002春季课程：重要英文小说：阅读浪漫小说

“英国浪漫主义”一词，有时专指此时期( 1790-1830)的诗歌，但此期间的英国散文和小说的创新也具同等的重要性。浪漫主义小说家在各类题材上开创革新，包括社会/哲学议题的小说、伤感和理性的小说以及历史性小说。这些作家都经历了法国大革命、拿破仑战争和早期的工业革命，即使作品本身的背景和这些剧变中的历史事件似乎遥不可及，但也传达其混乱和变动的精神。在今年‘重要的英文小说’课程中，我们会读到有关瘟疫、战争、狂暴的情绪和怪物等，作家则包括威廉．戈德温、玛丽亚．埃奇沃斯、珍．奥斯汀、玛丽．雪莱和华特．司各特。在学期的最后几周，我们会阅读维多利亚时期的巨著之一∶狄更斯的《远大前程》，与先前作品对照。另外，每人必须撰写两篇论文，一篇约五到七页，另一篇则是八到十页，最后则是口述报告。

Though the era of British Romanticism (ca. 1790-1830) is sometimes exclusively associated with the poetry of these years, this period was just as importantly a time of great innovation in British prose fiction. Romantic novelists pioneered or revolutionized several genres, including social/philosophical problem novels, tales of sentiment and sensibility, and the historical novel. Writing in the years of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the early industrial revolution, these writers conveyed a spirit of chaos and upheaval even in stories whose settings are seemingly farthest removed from those cataclysmic historical events. In this year's offering of "Major English Novels," we will read of plagues, wars, hysterics, monsters and more in novels by authors including William Godwin, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and Walter Scott. In the final weeks of the semester, we will read one major novel of the Victorian era, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, in light of these earlier texts. There will be two essay assignments, one 5-7 pages and one 8-10 pages in length, and required presentations.