Unit rationale, description and aim

Now the dominant and most innovative form in world literature, the novel is a relatively new genre of imaginative writing that opened up new ways of understanding and articulating human experience. The ‘long’ eighteenth century is widely regarded as the foundational period for modern literary culture, and when the novel gained critical acceptance.

In this unit, students will study the emergence of the novel in the context of Britain's and Europe's expanding and competing global ambitions. The unit explores the interaction of this literary form with some of the key social, cultural, or intellectual issues of the period, alongside the novel form’s experimental deployment of style. Students will read seminal novels by writers such as Behn, Defoe, Richardson, Sterne, Fielding, Godwin, Shelley, Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell, Flaubert, Hugo, Dostoevsky, and James. They will study the writers, the writing, and the cultural and intellectual milieu that underpinned the emergence of this exciting literary genre, and the richer, more self-reflective inner world it enabled.

The aim of this unit is to examine the rise of the novel from the seventeenth century through to the end of the nineteenth century, focusing on its literary innovation and connection to the literary, cultural, historical, intellectual, aesthetic or ethical contexts of the time. Students will develop the capacity to analyse and critique a range of novels within the Western literary tradition, setting these in the context of the development of the novel form, and in relation to a range of literary, cultural, historical, intellectual, aesthetic or ethical concerns of the period.

2026 10

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  • Term Mode
  • Semester 1Campus Attendance

Prerequisites

WLIT100 Greek and Roman Classics: Origins of Western Literature

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

Describe theoretical approaches towards and broad ...

Learning Outcome 01

Describe theoretical approaches towards and broad knowledge of key works in the novel form
Relevant Graduate Capabilities: GC1, GC3, GC7, GC9, GC11, GC12

Explain clearly in written and/or oral form, in a ...

Learning Outcome 02

Explain clearly in written and/or oral form, in a style appropriate to a specified audience, using disciplinary terminology and analysis
Relevant Graduate Capabilities: GC1, GC7, GC9, GC11, GC12

Analyse literary, cultural, historical, intellectu...

Learning Outcome 03

Analyse literary, cultural, historical, intellectual, aesthetic or ethical ideas and movements in the emergence of the novel form in order to formulate an intellectually-grounded, evidence-based argument
Relevant Graduate Capabilities: GC1, GC3, GC7, GC9

Research and interpret disciplinary knowledge, me...

Learning Outcome 04

Research and interpret disciplinary knowledge, methods and skills relevant to the literary and historical development of the novel form
Relevant Graduate Capabilities: GC1, GC3, GC4, GC7, GC9

Content

Topics may include: 

  • Literary, cultural, historical, intellectual, aesthetic or ethical ideas and movements in the emergence of the novel form
  • Early forms of the novel or novella
  • Narrative style, parody and satire
  • Gothic fiction
  • Realisms (literary, moral, psychological, etc)
  • The bildungsroman
  • Travel writing and the novel, and colonialism
  • The novel, morality, and the moral imagination
  • Sentimental fiction, marriage, and the ‘New Woman’
  • The evangelical novel
  • The novel and the law
  • The novel, science and medicine
  • Book trade, publication and press censorship
  • Nineteenth-century French, Russian and American novels

Assessment strategy and rationale

This unit is designed to include assessment tasks that build content knowledge and higher-order research and analytic skills. The close reading task requires students to demonstrate a capacity to apply considered critical responses to novels in the Western tradition. The class presentation task requires students to present and defend a verbal argument in relation to a particular novel in the Western tradition and encourages all students to provide feedback and critique to their peers. The research task develops skills in relation to proposing an argument and locating and evaluating sources on the novel form, developing a sustained evidence-based argument, and active engagement with key literary debates. The assessment tasks for this unit have been designed to contribute to high-quality student learning by both helping students learn (assessment for learning), and by measuring explicit evidence of their learning (assessment of learning). Assessments have been developed to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with the University's assessment requirements. These have been designed so that they use a variety of tasks to measure the different learning outcomes at a level suitable for second-year studies in the subject area.

In order to pass the unit, students must successfully complete all assessment tasks, demonstrating their ability to analyse texts critically through close reading and engagement with key literary debates in the context of the Western tradition, present and defend verbal arguments, and construct evidence-based and critically engaged research essays.

Overview of assessments

Assessment 1: Close reading task   This task...

Assessment 1: Close reading task 

This task requires students to produce a close analysis of one selected passage, which takes into consideration matters of literary form and style.

Weighting

20%

Learning Outcomes LO1, LO2
Graduate Capabilities GC1, GC3, GC7, GC9, GC11, GC12

Assessment 2: Presentation   This task requi...

Assessment 2: Presentation 

This task requires students to present and defend a verbal argument related to the unit content.

Weighting

30%

Learning Outcomes LO1, LO2, LO3
Graduate Capabilities GC1, GC3, GC7, GC9, GC11, GC12

Assessment 3: Part A- Research Proposal This ta...

Assessment 3: Part A- Research Proposal

This task requires students to propose an evidence-based argument, engaging with primary and secondary material.  

Weighting

10%

Learning Outcomes LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4
Graduate Capabilities GC1, GC3, GC4, GC7, GC9, GC11, GC12

Assessment 3: Part B- Research Essay This task r...

Assessment 3: Part B- Research Essay

This task requires students to sustain an evidence-based argument, engaging with primary and secondary material. 

Weighting

40%

Learning Outcomes LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4
Graduate Capabilities GC1, GC3, GC4, GC7, GC9, GC11, GC12

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit is designed and delivered in a small-group face-to-face mode, which facilitates the use of the Socratic method. It will immerse students in active learning through cooperative dialogue designed to stimulate critical thinking and challenge pre-existing assumptions. Learning exercises will facilitate the development of skills in literary critical analysis and situating literary texts in cultural, historical and intellectual contexts. In addition to reading a range of novels, students will participate in formative and summative tasks of textual interpretation and evaluation, engaging in informed scholarly argument and debate.

This is a 10-credit point unit and has been designed to ensure that the time needed to complete the required volume of learning to the requisite standard is approximately 150 hours in total across the semester. To achieve a passing standard, students will find it helpful to need to engage in the full range of learning activities and assessments.

Representative texts and references

Representative texts and references

Armstrong, Nancy. How Novels Think: The Limits of Individualism, 1719-1900. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Beer, Gillian. Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Davidson, Cathy N. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. Victorian Afterlives: The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Figlerowicz, Marta. Flat Protagonists: A Theory of Novel Character. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Flint, Kate. The Transatlantic Indian, 1776-1930. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.

McKean, Michael. Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002 (revised edition).

Nussbaum, Martha. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Ratcliffe, Sophie. On Sympathy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Rosenthal, Jesse. Good Form: The Ethical Experience of the Victorian Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

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