Depending on who you ask, "the novel" has been around for 400, 500, or even 2000 years. In that sense, it isn't very "novel" any more. Yet it remains the form of literature that more readers turn to than any other when they want to understand their world, their times and themselves. These books have changed tremendously over their long history, becoming ever more diverse and varied, staying "novel" by adapting to shifting contexts, yet continuities in the form make a novel from 2026 still recognizable as a descendant of forebears from the 1700s. This class will immerse you in that remarkable literary, social, and political history of continuity and change, connecting the English-language novel's world-shaking origins to its enduring present-day cultural prominence. In this online asynchronous class we'll consider how literary scholars have explored exactly what a novel is, was, and will be. You'll engage closely with a range of "theories of the novel" while carrying out an extended independent research project on a major novel of your choosing.
Online Asynchronous
Summer Session 1, 2026
Dr. Michael Docherty
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