120034 PS Introductory Seminar (literature) (2008S)

This course will focus on the cultural diversity of the 'Long' 18th Century - the time span from 1660-1789/98 which subdivides into periods as heterogeneous as the Restoration era, the Augustan Age and the Age of Sensibility. To elucidate the refashioning of late 17th century aristocratic into 'bourgeois' culture, it will take a comparative look at Wycherley's notoriously bawdy Restoration comedy The Country Wife and Lillo's 'sentimental' domestic tragedy The London Merchant. With regard to fiction, we will compare Fielding's 'picaresque' novel Joseph Andrews with selected passages taken from Bunyan's narrative allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela, and Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Further texts to be discussed in class will include Dryden's mock heroic satire Mc Flecknoe, entries from Samuel Pepys' Diary and poems written by Sir Wilmont the 2nd Earl of Rochester, Pope, Swift, Gray etc.

Assessment: class participation; presentation; term paper, final written exam.