author : Leo Damrosch

This is the course guidebook that accompanies the 24 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially an abbreviated transcript of each lecture, a few pictures, and some related reading. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

This is a very interesting discussion of various works leading up to and shaping the establishment of the novel as a literary form. It covers some works I had heard of, such as Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Candide, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, and Middlemarch, but also covers other works new to me. For each of these, we hear what the particular work contributed to in defining the shape of the genre, (what was ‘novel’ about it, if you like), and its historical context: how it builds on, or departs from, earlier works.