(Inventing English)

In recent years, considerably more attention is being paid to the process whereby an Imperial British identity emerges during the eighteenth century, and the constitutive role played by English language and literature in that emergence. This recent critical discourse of “writing the nation” will form the context for this seminar that seeks to complement one offered last year in “The Age of Johnson.” While we may conclude our seminar with a consideration of some works from Johnson (possibilities include The Dictionary, Rasselas, and Irene), our primary focus will be on the generations immediately preceding Johnson. I hope that each of us will develop and pursue research projects that coalesce around some aspect of this general subject of “inventing English.” My own project will be focusing on tensions of class and regionalism that beset attempts in this period to appropriate an exotic “other” (often designated “Oriental”) for the purpose of reifying an idealized notion of English purity that is often inflected by ambivalent responses to that vexing term, “liberty.” While I have not made a final determination of all texts, we are likely to read from among the following: Dryden, Aurang-Zebe, Indian Queen, Indian Emperor; Aprha Behn, Oroonoko; Eliza Haywood, Philidore and Placentia; Defoe, Tour of Great Britain, Robinson Crusoe, Roxana; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Mary Wortley-Montague, Embassy Letters; Cheyne, The English Malady. Secondary materials are likely to include works by Edward Said, Jurgen Habermas, Benedict Anderson, Linda Colley, and Leith Davis, among others. Students will be responsible for two oral presentations, an abstract, and a 20-25 page paper.