A small appetizer from the lecture:

"The development of the novel as a genre has long been seen as intertwined with the rise of modernity. The novel, it has been argued, both signals and participates in such massive trends as the emergence of capitalism and the middle class, modern subjectivity, secularism, and the nation-state, and its various formal features have long been read as crucially linked to those socio-historical shifts. Recently, however, these paradigms have been increasingly complicated by a broader understanding of both its formal traits – a move away from equating the novel with the realist tradition, and a more nuanced sense of that tradition itself – and by a more global perspective on literary works, broadening out from the narrow confines of England and France. What do those critiques mean for historicist approaches to the novel’s rise? What are the shortcomings of previous efforts to link form and socio-historical context? What are their strengths? Can they be reconciled with newer ways of looking at the novel, and if so, how? How can do we make sense of the historical underpinnings of unnatural narration, for instance, or arrive at a more global account of the multiple strands of fictional practice? And do we need to?"

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