Katharine Beutner's Courses

This course explores a number of works that influenced the development of what we now think of as the romance genre. We will begin in the early eighteenth century with a piece of amatory fiction written by a prolific and market-savvy professional woman writer and will conclude with two late-twentieth-century works that appropriate and comment on the tropes of the modern category of romance. We will explore continuities and disjunctions in the evolving tradition of the romance, and will read our selected texts through formal, cultural, and historical lenses. We will also discuss genre, the concept of popularity, and canon formation, and will consider what, specifically, identifies particular generic features with women readers and writers.

This course is designed to help you sharpen the critical reading skills you will need as a student of English literature. You will learn about methods of close reading and of research, and will read and engage with criticism by other academics, though your focus will be on the primary texts listed below. To bolster your critical writing skills, you will produce several short papers and one longer paper, and will have opportunities to revise your work.