The epistolary novel uses the form of letters to tell its story. Starting with Aphra Behn's remarkable, Love-letters Between a Noble-man and his Sister, this course will follow the development of this literary form through three centuries by exploring texts in which it reaches both its heights and its limits. The course will include novels which have been popular in their time and which remain highly pleasurable to read: Richardson's Pamela, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Stoker's Dracula, and Byatt's Possession. But we will also attend closely to the problems of representation these authors face, and to the way that literary form relates to and shapes the novel's content. The epistolary form, which pre-dates the fully-fledged novel, quickly runs into limits that make other forms of fiction writing appear much more sophisticated by the end of the eighteenth century. We will want to look at what these limits are, and at why the form nevertheless prevails. In writing papers, students will be encouraged to engage critically with a wide range of secondary criticism and literary history, including writing on the rise of the novel. Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: active participation in class discussion, and 20 pages of writing in the form of short essays. Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference given to first-year students, sophomores, and English majors who have yet to take a Gateway. (1700-1900)

Hour: LUPTON