The course will open with a detailed study of The General Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" and the class will examine how several historical developments (including the plague and the Crusades) impacted the development of fiction that focuses on the lives of ordinary people.  Students will have the opportunity to read various examples of fiction (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Wife of Willesden, and The Mere Wife) and will also explore the various components of fiction, including setting, characterization, and point of view. Perhaps even more important, students will look at the ways that various writers have created fiction to examine the times in which they lived and wrote. Focusing on Marion Turner's historical study of women in the Middle Ages and Rebecca Romney's study of the women writers who influenced Jane Austen, students will develop a better understanding of the circumstances that led writers to create women characters who resisted the conditions that faced them and then worked to establish themselves as fully human beings.