COURSE SCHEDULE
WEEK 1
Tues. Sept. 2
Introduction to the Course and Requirements
Civil War and its fall-out -- viewing from Simon Schama's History of Britain series
Thurs. Sept. 4 Last Day to Add/Drop
Margaret Cavendish Poetry selections, Selection from The Description of a New World, call the Blazing World and The Convent of Pleasure pp. 3-31.
Samuel Pepys's Diary selections about the Great Fire of London pp. 112-23.
Note: Wherever available read Broadview’s “In Context” material
Background reading: Broadview Introduction to The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century
WEEK 2
Tues. Sept. 9 Sign-up for Presentations
John Bunyan selection from The Pilgrim’s Progress
Thurs. Sept. 11
John Dryden "Absolom and Achitophel"
1 Seminar: The Popish Plot and the meaning of the Biblical references in “Absalom and Achitophel”
WEEK 3
Tues. Sept. 16
Aphra Behn Orinoco
2 Seminar: Aphra Behn: Writer or Spy?
Thurs. Sept. 18
William Wycherley The Country Wife
Background Reading: “Print Culture, Stage Culture”
3 Seminar: The restoration of the Theatre and cultural attitudes to it. What was it like to attend a play? Who went? What went on off-stage as well as on-stage?
WEEK 4 MAKEUP DAY ON FRIDAY
Tues. Sept. 23
Daniel Defoe Selections from Robinson Crusoe
4 Seminar: Who was Friday in Robinson Crusoe (our excerpt doesn't have his story)? Consider his racial, cultural and religious significance in light of British imperial attitudes.
Thurs. Sept. 25 Rakes and Sluts?
Eliza Haywood's Fantomina and excerpts from the works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (Look at Rochester In Context on the website). Aphra Behn's "The Disappointment"
5 Seminar: Reputation -- literary and sexual -- and the woman writer: the case of Eliza Haywood
Fri. Sept. 26
Read the selections from Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea; Mary Astell's "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies" and "Reflections Upon Marriage"; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu "The Reasons that Induced Dr. S to Write a Poem Called the Lady's Dressing Room"; Jonathan Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room,""Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to her Husband," and "The Spectator No. 573".
6 Seminar: Coffee House Culture
WEEK 5 FIRST ESSAY DUE
Tues. Sept. 30 FIRST ESSAY DUE
Jonathan Swift Selection from Gulliver's Travels
7 Seminar: Political references in Gulliver's Travels. Who was Walpole and how did he change English government?
Thurs. Oct. 2 First Essay Due
Selections from Samuel Johnson in The Rambler, The Idler and the Dictionary; and excerpt from James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson p. 135
8 Seminar: Hogarth and his pictures of life and human nature
WEEK 6
Tues. Oct. 7
Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (Restoration Anthology)
Mary Prince The History of Mary Prince A West Indian Slave Related by Herself (Romantics Anthology)
Background reading: “Colonization and Slavery” on the Website and Contexts: The Abolition of Slavery in the next Anthology Age of Romanticism
9 Seminar: Slavery and the Anti-Slavery Movement in Britain
Thurs. Oct. 9
Alexander Pope "The Rape of the Lock"
WEEK 7 MID-TERM WEEK
Tues. Oct. 14
Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto
Edmund Burke’s writings on the sublime
Thomas Gray "Elegy on a Country Churchyard"
10 Seminar: The eighteenth-century concept of the sublime
Thurs. Oct. 16
The Labouring Class Poets: Read excerpts from Stephen Duck, Mary Collier, Mary Leapor and Elizabeth Hands
Robert Burns "To a Mouse," "A Man's a Man for A' That," "Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn," A Red, Red Rose,""Auld Lang Syne"
Cowper from The Task Book 1: The Sofa
Oliver Goldsmith "The Deserted Village"
Thomas Gray "Elegy on a Country Churchyard"
11 Seminar: What are Land Enclosures and what was their social impact on the changing social landscape of 18th century Britain?
WEEK 8
Tues. Oct. 21 MID-TERM EXAM
Thurs. Oct. 23
William Blake "Songs of Innocence and Experience"
Background Reading: French Revolution and Napoleonic Era (Website)
View excerpt from Simon Schama's History of Britain series: Forces of Nature
WEEK 9
Tues. Oct. 28
Read selections from Anna Laetitia Barbauld "The Rights of Women", "Washing Day," "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem"; Charlotte Smith "Beachy Head"; Mary Wollstonecraft "Maria or the Wrongs of Women"; Felicia Hemans "The Homes of England," "Women and Fame"; Mary Robinson "A Letter to the Women of England," "The Negro Girl"; Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.) "Love's Last Lesson".
Background reading: Women and Society p. 100ff
Thurs. Oct. 30
Coleridge "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Shelley's "Adonais"
WEEK 10
Tues. Nov. 4
Wordsworth "Tintern Abbey," "Michael," "I wandered lonely as a Cloud," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "My heart leaps up".
Thurs. Nov. 6
De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater
Read In Context: “India and the Orient”
12 Seminar: Drug-taking in the early nineteenth century and British attitudes to the Orient
WEEK 11
Tues. Nov. 11
Read Selections from John Keats: "La Belle Dame San Merci" "Eve of St. Agnes" "Ode on a Grecian Urn" "Ode to a Nightingale" "To Autumn""Ode on Melancholy"
Thurs. Nov. 13
Percy Bysshe Shelley "Mask of Anarchy" "Adonais"
13 Seminar: The Peterloo Massacre and what it meant in terms of shifting political and class relations
WEEK 12 SECOND ESSAY DUE THIS WEEK
Tues. Nov. 18 Deflating romantic pretensions SECOND ESSAY DUE TODAY
Lord Byron -- selection from Don Juan
Thurs. Nov. 20
Mary Shelley Frankenstein
14 Seminar: Scientific theories informing Frankenstein
WEEK 13
Tues. Nov. 25
TRIP TO KEATS SHELLEY HOUSE
Thurs. Nov. 28 NO CLASS THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
WEEK 14
Tues. Dec. 2
Mary Shelley Frankenstein
Thurs. Dec. 4
Mary Shelley Frankenstein
Summing Up and Review
Final Exams