02:30P-3:45P TR (30) 3 cr.
OPEN TO MAJORS ONLY. DECLARED MINORS OBTAIN AUTHORIZATION FROM BH442.
TOPIC: AMBIGUITY, AMBIVALENCE, AND IRONY IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Our focus will be on developing a comfortable awareness of the ways in which literary texts of the long eighteenth century (ie, 1660-1820) often enacted disparate–sometimes contradictory– meanings simultaneously. We will read a variety of genres (drama, poetry, and prose). Texts will include Restoration and Eighteenth Century Comedy , The Writings of Jonathan Swift , The Poems of Alexander Pope , and at least a pair of novels. Possibilities for these last-mentioned texts include Henry Fielding’s Jonathan Wild or Joseph Andrews , Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield , Laurence Sterne (either Sentimental Journey or Tristram Shandy ), and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice . Students will be required to write two papers. The first, a relatively brief (4-6 pp.) critical discussion of an individual work, will be followed by a longer (8-12 pp) discussion that will involve research into relative critical or historical materials.