This course surveys British fiction in the eighteenth century, when the novel flourished as a popular form of literature and attracted critical attention as a dangerously potent genre. We read five crucial novels by Daniel Defoe (Roxana), Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy), Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto), Frances Burney (Evelina), and Maria Edgeworth (Belinda) as well as satirical narratives (Fielding’s Shamela, and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey). We consider why eighteenth-century readers embraced the publication of pseudo-autobiographies, fictive letters, alien adventures, and gothic horror stories – and why critics were appalled. This course fulfills the Literature elective requirement in Literary Studies. After the first week of the semester, permission of the instructor will be required in order to register for this course.