Oakland University
Department of English

Course Information

English 644-Eighteenth-Century Literature:

Comedy, Humour, Satire, Sentiment, and Sublimity

A good starting point for finding resources on the web is The MWASECS Link Page

Some related links:

Chronology, 1660-1800 Click on a year, and see what happened!

London Theater 1660-1700 by Patricia Craddock

Restoration Theaters and Theater People--PICTURES! by Patricia Craddock

Invitation to a Funeral--A Hyper-Tale of Restoration Intrigue, featuring Aphra Behn as the protagonist

The Dictionary of Sensibility

Other useful links are hidden in the reading list below.

English 644--Eighteenth-Century Literature: Comedy Humour, Satire, Sentiment, and Sublimity

Fall 1999

W 6:30-9:50, 301 WH

Brian Connery

517 WH, x 2267

connery@oakland.edu

Office hours: T 4-5, W 5-5:45, F 2:30-3:30, and by appointment

Description: Through reading and discussion of representative plays, prose, and verse, we'll explore some fundamental aesthetic concepts that arose (and, in some cases, fell) during the period 1660-1790. In addition to imaginative works by the likes of Dryden, Behn, Steele, Swift, Pope, Fielding, Sheridan, and Sterne, we'll also read contemporary critical work by Collier, Addison, Steele, Shaftesbury, Johnson, and Burke. Students will make one group presentation, write one paper (7-10 pages), and complete one take-home examination.

Texts: Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, ed. Sheridan Baker, 2nd ed., Norton; Lillo, George, The London Merchant; McKenzie, Henry, The Man of Feeling (Oxford U P); Scott McMillin, ed., Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Comedy, 2nd ed., Norton; Sterne, Tristram Shandy; coursepack (will be distributed in class). Students should also procure access to a good anthology of 17th- and 18th-century British literature: any edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, for instance.

September

8 Orientation and history lesson; matters logistical; an introduction to satire

Rochester, A Satyre against Reason and Mankind (coursepack)

Pope, The Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogues 1 and 2 (coursepack)

Swift, "Phyllis, or The Progress of Love" (coursepack)

Hogarth, The Rake's Progress (multimedia extravaganza)

15 Wycherley, The Country Wife (McMillin)

Behn, The Rover (McMillin)

Hobbes, "On Laughter" (McMillin 457-58)

Addison, Spectator No. 62 (McMillin 486-89)

Hobbes, "On Wit" (McMillin 458-461)

Hobbes, "On Power" (McMillan 461-465)

Collier, from A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (McMillin 493-506)

22 Etherege, The Man of Mode (McMillan)

Congreve, The Way of the World (McMillan)

Dennis, The Usefulness of the Stage (McMillan 506-512)

Congreve, Amendments to Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations (McMillin 513- 516)

Steele, Spectator No. 65 (McMillan 517-519)

Dennis, "A Defense of Sir Fopling Flutter," (McMillan 525-529)

29 An interlude on irony (Group report)

Swift, An Argument to Prove that the Abolishing of Christiantiy in England May be Attended with Some Inconveniencies (coursepack)

Mr. C___ns's Discourse of Free Thinking, Put into Plain English by Way of Abstract, for the Use of the Poor (coursepack)

A Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners (coursepack)

A Modest Proposal (anthology)

Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (anthology)

Stanley Fish, "Short People Got No Reason to Live: Reading Irony" (coursepack)

October

6 Sentiment (Group report)

Shaftesbury, from Characters (coursepack)

Addison and Steele, Spectator Nos. 1, 2, and 106 (coursepack)

Steele, The Theatre Nos. 1 and 3 (McMillan 519-525)

Steele, The Conscious Lovers (McMillan)

Dennis, "Remarks on The Conscious Lovers" (McMillan 529-534)

L. C. Knights, "Restoration Comedy: The Reality and the Myth" (McMillan 572-582)

Lillo, George, The London Merchant

13 Pathos & the Sublime (Group report)

Steele, Spectator No. 11 (coursepack)

Addison, Spectator Nos. 411-412 (coursepack)

Burke, from A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (coursepack)

Milton, "Il Penseroso" (anthology)

Thomson, "Winter" (coursepack)

Joseph Warton, "The Enthusiast" (coursepack)

Thomas Warton, "The Pleasures of Melancholy" (coursepack)

Blair, "The Grave" (coursepack)

Collins, "Ode to Fear" (coursepack)

Wordsworth, "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (anthology)

Shelley, "Mont Blanc" (anthology)

20 Bathos and the Satiric Sublime

Dryden, "MacFlecknoe," (anthology)

Dryden, "Absolom and Achitophel." (anthology)

Pope, The Dunciad (coursepack)

Pope, from Peri Bathos (coursepack)

Swift, "Description of a City Shower" (anthology)

Swift, "The Legion Club" (coursepack)

27 Humour and the comic-epic in prose (Group report on humour and comedy)

Congreve, "Concerning Humour in Comedy" (McMillin 474-480)

Addison, Spectator No. 47 (McMillin 483-486

Fielding's "Preface" to Joseph Andrews (coursepack)

Fielding, Tom Jones

November

3 Fielding, Tom Jones

Johnson, Rambler No. 4 (coursepack)

10 Fielding, Tom Jones

17 Steele, Spectator No. 6 (coursepack)

McKenzie, The Man of Feeling

Sheridan, The School for Scandal

Paper is due.

24 Addison, Spectator No. 517 (coursepack)

Sterne, Tristram Shandy

December

1 Tristram Shandy

8 Johnson, Rambler No. 207 (coursepack)

Tristram Shandy

15 Final exam

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