11:15P-12:30P TR (70) 3 cr.
TOPIC--PROVIDENCE OF WIT: REDEMPTIVE COMEDY IN EARLY MODERN LITERATURE
In this course, we will explore how writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sought to understand the inter-relatedness of good and evil, hope and despair; and how in their art they embraced a doctrine that “to create/Is greater than created to destroy.” The literary and cultural heritage they left to subsequent generations–including our own--reminds us not only of the persistence of dramatic conflict but of the fundamentally comic redemptive possibilities of “the Eternal art.” This course will emphasize a philosophical mode of comedy that locates the possibilities of hope and happiness as contained within moments of suffering and despair. Students will be responsible for a considerable amount of reading; some of the works will be long, difficult, and historically remote. Class time will be devoted both to helping students comprehend such materials, and discussing their continuing relevance in the present. Because the reading load will be heavy, the writing load will be correspondingly lighter, with a greater emphasis on examinations than on papers. Required texts for the course are likely to include: John Milton’s Paradise Lost , William Congreve’s The Way of the World , Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe , Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man , Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones , and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice ; in addition, some other brief works (both prose and poetry) may be included.