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.
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
Explain clearly in written and/or oral form, in a ...
Learning Outcome 02
Analyse literary, cultural, historical, intellectu...
Learning Outcome 03
Research and interpret disciplinary knowledge, me...
Learning Outcome 04
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.
20%
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.
30%
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.
10%
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.
40%
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.