2:30p-3:45p TR (30) 3 cr.
TOPIC: “WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ‘PUBLIC SPHERE’?”
This course will take as its starting point Jurgen Habermas’s The
Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere. Beginning with his
observation that in England at
the end of the seventeenth- and the beginning of the eighteenth-
centuries there opened up a
discursive space mediating between the private citizen and state
authorities, we will
examine the roles played by literature in shaping, changing, and
resisting the ideas of
‘public-ness’ and publicity that we more or less take for granted
today. While we may glance
back to some of the later works of the Restoration, our emphasis will
fall heavily on the
early eighteenth century--most heavily on the consolidation of the
Walpole administration
immediately preceding and following the death of George I and the
succession of George II.
As this narrative suggests, we will be insistent in reading literature
in its historical
context. Authors will include Pope, Swift, Gay, Arbuthnot, and Defoe,
and may include
Dryden, Otway, Rochester, Behn, Wortley-Montague, Finch, Hogarth, or
Fielding, among others.
Students will write one short (3-5 page) and one longer (6-10 page)
paper, and may be asked
to lead class discussion.