2:30p-3:20p MWF (30) 3 cr

OPEN TO MAJORS ONLY. DECLARED MINORS OBTAIN AUTHORIZATION FROM BH402.

This course is a survey of works written in England and America in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. It attempts to balance older and newer conceptions of what this course might be. A traditional version of the course might emphasize the importance of a close reading of the literary masterworks of Donne, Jonson, Herbert, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, and Samuel Johnson. A newer conception of the course might shift the emphasis to "historicizing" or "contextualizing" a broader range of texts which seem to offer access to the culture in which they were produced. Moreover, such a course would take a "Transatlantic" perspective, and therefore include works by Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. In this course I will let the older "literary" perspective and the newer "cultural studies" perspective comment on each other. Sometimes the discussion will be framed in literary terms ("metaphysical wit," the epic and mock-epic, the rise and fall of satire). At other times it will be historical and cultural: the Puritan Revolution and Restoration, the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, shifts in relations of the sexes and social classes. But I will always try to think about the connections between what happens on the page of the text and what happens in the world in which texts are written and read. Because the most recent edition of the Norton Anthology (seventh edition) attempts to be more than just a literary history, I will adopt it as the basic text for the course. (Additional text to be announced). Students will be asked to write short responses to the reading and to write four short critical essays. There will also be a midterm and a final.