- Enseignant-e: Elizabeth Kukorelly Leverington
A utopia is no-place, but as a construct of the imagination it points to
a place in which perfect harmony prevails. In most of her novels, Sarah
Fielding portrays places and people that strive to achieve such
harmony; she often ends up showing the futility of such an enterprise.
In this striving, her protagonists describe a field of ideal and
generous behaviour that needs to be upheld in the face of an encroaching
and corrupt world. As ideal behaviour meets corrupt world, the novels'
discursive force is deployed to help readers negotiate possible
happiness in the real world.
Fielding was an experimental novelist:
she wrote the first school story ever ('The Little Academy'), she
developed strategies of revisionary sequels ('David Simple'), and
together with Jane Collier took the idea of fictional narrative to the
limits of the readable ('The Cry'). During this seminar we will read
these novels (in full, but with extracts from 'The Cry'), as well as
Sarah Scott's 'A Description of Millenium Hall,' a truly utopian novel,
in which harmony is achieved and preserved.
The texts, with the
exception of 'A Description of Millenium Hall,' for which you are asked
to buy the Broadview Edition, will be made available on Moodle.