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English 666 Eighteenth Century Literature Robert Markley Fall, 2001 Home
English 666
Eighteenth-Century Literature
Professor Robert Markley
Office: 432 Office Hours: T: 3:00-4:00; W: 1-3
e-mail: robertmarkley@hotmail.com
Office phone: 293-3107, ext 437

This course will introduce you to some of the major male and female writers of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England, and will provide opportunities to do in-depth work on the literary culture of the period. In this respect, the course will allow those of you who have managed to skip the period to fill in the blank spaces on your intellectual maps--Pope, Dryden, Swift, and so on--as well as offer those of you who may decide to work in the eighteenth century opportunities to read these writers and crucial figures as Behn, Burney, Defoe, and Fielding in more depth. We will read novels, poetry, drama, and some non-fictional works; by the end of the semester you will have a solid working knowledge of the literature of the period.

Restoration and eighteenth-century literature often receives a bad press from non-specialists who equate it with an austere formalism and political conservatism. Nothing could be further from the truth. To combat such generalizations, we will emphasize feminist and materialist criticism approaches to the period and pay particular attention to the radical, sexual, satiric and sensationalist aspects of Restoration and eighteenth-century literature. You will be encouraged to work on those primary and secondary texts which interest you, and students who intend to specialize in other periods will receive ample encouragement to draw connections between their work in this course and their larger scholarly interests. Each student will be responsible for an oral presentation (ungraded); a short paper (6-7 pp); and a longer term paper (15 pp.).

Course Schedule

August 22: syllabi will be passed out and readings assigned for the following week.

August 29: Hobbes, 9-12; Filmer 12-14; John Milton 51-55 (selection from Eikonoklastes and three sonnets); Locke 390-94

September 5: Margaret Fell, 309-313; Margaret Cavendish "Dialogue"; Katharine Phillips, "Friendship's Mystery," "Friendship in Emblem"; "Orinda to Lucasia"; Jane Barker, "To My Young Lover"; Aphra Behn, "The Disappointment," "To the Fair Clarinda"; Anne Finch, "The Introduction," "The Unequal Fetters," "The Spleen"

September 12: John Dryden, "Annus Mirabilis"; Rochester, "Satyr Against Reason and Mankind," "A Satyr on Charles II"

September 19: Aphra Behn, "The Golden Age"; "On Desire"

September 26: Behn, The Rover

October 3: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

October 10: Alexander Pope, "Of the Characters of Woman"; The Rape of the Lock (paper # 1 due)

October 17: Jonathan Swift, "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed," "A Description of the Morning," A Modest Proposal; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "The Reasons that Induced Dr. Swift"

October 24: Stephen Duck, "The Thresher's Labour"; Mary Collier, "The Woman's Labour"

October 31: Eliza Haywood, Fantomina

November 7: Samuel Richardson, Pamela

November 14: Henry Fielding, Shamela and Joseph Andrews

November: 28: Mary Leapor, "Crumble-Hall," "Man the Monarch"; Oliver Goldsmith, "The Deserted Village"

December 5: Frances Burney, Evelina

December 10: paper # 2 due

Principal Resources

Journals:

Eighteenth-Century Life
Eighteenth-Century Studies
The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation
Eighteenth-Century Fiction
Restoration
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theater Research

Scholarly Works:

Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction (1987)
Armstrong and Tennenhouse, The Imaginary Puritan (1992)
Hunter, Before Novels (1991)
McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel (1987)
Thompson, Models of Value (1996)
Markley, Two-Edg'd Weapons (1988)
Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957)
Straub, Players' Sceptres (1991)
Hutner, ed., Rereading Aphra Behn (1993)
Pearson, The Prostituted Muse (1988)
Cook, Epistolary Bodies (1996)
Goodridge, Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry
Nussbaum, Torrid Zones (1994)
Nussbaum and Brown, The New Eighteenth Century (1987)
Hobby, Virtue of Necessity (1988)
Markley, Fallen Languages (1993)
Spacks, Imagining a Self (1976)
Spacks, Desire and Truth (1990)
Rumbold, Women's Place in Pope's World (1989)
Bowers, The Politics of Motherhood (1997)
Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (1991)
Wheeler, The Complexion of Race (2000)
Straub, Divided Fictions (1987)
Griffin, Literary Patronage (1996)
Campbell, Natural Masques (1995)
Pollak, The Poetics of Literary Form (1985)
Brown, Pope (1985)
Ballaster, Seductive Forms (1992)
Staves, Married Women's Separate Property (1990)
Davis, Factual Fictions (1983)
Gallagher, Nobody's Story (1994)
Aravamudan, Tropicopolitans (1999)
Hammond, Pope (1996)
Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-century England (1998)
Wall, The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London (1999)
Brown, Ends of Empire (1993)
Holmes, The Making of a Great Power (1993)
Brewer, Sinews of Power (1991)
Turley, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash (1999)
Landry, Muses of Resistance (1990)
Gwilliam, Richardson's Fictions of Gender (1993)
Winch, Riches and Poverty (1996)
Bellamy, Commerce, Morality, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel (1998)
Stevenson, The British Novel (1990)
Castle, Masquerade and Civilization (1986)
Castle, Clarissa's Ciphers

 

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