1:00p-2:15p TR (30) 3 cr.
OPEN TO MAJORS ONLY. DECLARED MINORS
OBTAIN AUTHORIZATION
FROM BH442.
TOPIC: FROM MONARCHY TO DEMOCRACY
This course considers a range of texts, literary and extra-literary,
written during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with Shakespeare's
King Lear in the
context of Jacobean England, we will end with Mary Wollstonecraft's
Vindication of the
Rights of Women in the context of the impact of the American and
French Revolutions.
Along the way we'll read works by Donne, Milton, Swift, Aphra Behn,
Pope, Rochester, Paine,
Jefferson and Tocqueville, and others who influenced the shift in
English and Transatlantic
culture from 1600-1800. We will pay special attention to how the
assumptions of the "age of
reason" shifted literary focus away from a politics couched largely in
religious,
philosophical and ethical terms onto concerns with manners, "civility"
and the nuances of
"polite" social behavior. We will explore from a number of critical
and theoretical
perspectives, a period of time that moved from debates about Divine
Providence and "fixed"
human nature to debates about rational scientific progress and the
power of individual
reason; that continued to debate over whether women are "innately"
inferior or are socially
trained to be so. We will look at how the notion of "the literary"
itself is produced as a
cultural category during this time period; and we will study the ways
authors achieve
aesthetic effects within specific social and historical contexts.
Requirements: There will be three short papers, a midterm and a final
exam. Attendance and
participation in discussion is mandatory, and will count for a portion
of the course
grade.