English Fiction | Winter Semester | 2026-2027 | Tatiana Kontou
(ENL707 | 63ΛΥ01) - Τατιάνα Κοντού
Περιγραφή Μαθήματος
Wednesday 9:15-12 | Room 427
Convenor: Tatiana Kontou | tkontou@enl.uoa.gr | HUB 802
Tel. 210-727 7902 | Office Hours: Mon. 12:15-1:15, Wed. 12:15-1:15
For student cohort ΚΑΣ-Ο
Course Description | This course introduces two of the major forms of English prose fiction--the novel and the short story. Reading a selection of texts from the eighteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth, alongside historical sources, we will explore the development of fiction across two hundred years. Based on close reading, we will consider how narrative portrays both the interior qualities of the human self and the external world: the social, cultural, scientific and historical fabric from which literary texts emerge. Encountering different methods of interpreting literature, you will be encouraged to hone your critical and analytical skills and to develop as a creative reader and a careful writer.
Required Reading
You are required to read all five set texts in full. Moll Flanders and Great Expectations are free and available through Project Gutenberg; Katherine Mansfield's "The Tiredness of Rosabel", Jean Rhys's "Mannequin", and Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover" will be uploaded as pdfs on eClass, which is organised in Units to facilitate your studying. To support seminar discussion and set tasks, I will provide extracts for analysis in class, together with the other documents listed as companions in the schedule. Please come to seminars having read the texts for that week. Your active participation is encouraged and expected.
NOTE: Moll Flanders has no chapter divisions. The weekly readings in the schedule are therefore given by narrative landmark rather than by chapter or page; whichever edition you read from, you will know where to stop.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the course you should be able to:
— read closely and discuss cogently the elements of fiction such as narrative voice, point of view, focalisation, free indirect discourse, diction, image, syntax, structure, accounting for their effects rather than merely naming them;
— argue with nuance about how point of view and literary device produce meaning, crafting a claim about a text that could be disagreed with, and supporting it from the text;
— recognise the characteristics of English prose fiction from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, and describe how the form changes across that span; the picaresque episode, the serialised bildungsroman, the modernist short story;
— situate a text within the social, cultural, scientific and historical conditions of its making, drawing on primary documents as well as on criticism;
— distinguish between different methods of interpreting literature, and use secondary material evaluatively rather than decoratively;
— write clearly, concisely and coherently under timed conditions with evidence and a clear line of argument, and act on detailed feedback in doing so.
Ημερομηνία δημιουργίας
Σάββατο 1 Αυγούστου 2026
