Fall 2007

E 392M • 18th Century British Literature: An Equal, Wide Survey

Unique	Days	Time	Location	Instructor
36275	TTh	12:30 PM-2:00 PM	PAR 305	BERTELSEN

Course Description

Spanning the century and comprising a wide selection of genres, the course will offer readings in significant eighteenth-century authors and texts. The goal will be to provide the student with a chronological, thematic, and contextual understanding of the development and contradictions of the literature produced in Britain between 1660 and 1800.

Texts

We will read parts or all of the following:

• Augustans and Victims: Pope, Essay on Criticism, Epistle to Burlington, Rape of the Lock, Dunciad; Swift, A Tale of a Tub; Haywood, Fantomina
• The Business of Crime: Gay, Beggar's Opera; Hogarth, Prints; Fielding, Covent-Garden Journal
• The Sublime, the Picturesque, and the Poor: Burke, The Sublime and The Beautiful; Gray, The Bard, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; Goldsmith, The Deserted Village
• The Literary Club: Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare, Lives of the Poets; Boswell, Life of Johnson
• Gothic: Lewis, The Monk
• Culmination: Austen, Pride and Prejudice (initially composed in 1796-97 as "First Impressions")

Texts: Primary (see above). Secondary: selections from Cambridge History of English Literature 1660-1780; Hay, et al., Albion's Fatal Tree; Rogers, Grub Street; Ingrassia, ed., New Perspectives on Pope's Dunciad; McDowell, Women of Grub Street; Thompson, Whigs and Hunters; and others to be determined.

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