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English 330
English Literature, 1640-1789
Spring 2003 |
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English 330
English Literature, 1640-1789
Spring 2003
T - Th, 11:00-12:20
Hoover 106 |
Professor Wendy
Furman-Adams
Office: Hoover 211
Phones: 907-4896; 693-1809
Office Hours: M,W, 2:00-4:30;
T-Th, 4:30-5:00.
Email:
wfurman@whittier.edu
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Renaissance, Revolution,
Romanticism: British Literature, 1640-1789
Compared to some courses, the period covered in
this course is not a long one: just under 150
years. Yet the period is a fascinating one
because it leads directly to our own
civilization (or the one just ending)--from the
Renaissance to the "modern world." The later
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been
called many things: the Age of Reason, the
Enlightenment, the "Age of Exuberance" (by my
late great former teacher Donald Greene), and,
perhaps most aptly of all, the Age of
Revolution.
Our period literally began with one revolution
(the English Puritan Revolution) and ended with
another (the French Revolution). But the period
was revolutionary in every way imaginable:
1. Politically--during this age of Locke,
Rousseau, and the American founding fathers--the
Divine Right of Kings gave way to the radical
idea (so obvious, at least in hindsight, to
Americans!) of the "social compact."
2. Socially, the middle class (i.e. most of us)
came into being as an active social
force--giving rise, with their new mobility, to
reform movements such as temperance and the
abolition of slavery.
3. Economically, an agrarian society gave way to
unprecedented urbanization and to the rise of
capitalism, with all its new opportunities and
dangers.
4. Educationally, opportunity both expanded and
changed--giving rise to a "reading public" that
for the first time included people of all
classes, and women as well as men.
5. Religiously, the relative unity and stability
of the middle ages continued to fragment, giving
rise first to a period of unprecedented
religious conflict--then to a relatively secular
society, in which "the pursuit of happiness"
came to mean what most of us mean by the phrase:
not the search for ultimate reality (God), but
personal happiness on this earth, in our
lifetimes.
6. Philosophically, the emphasis on authority
that had been the hallmark of learning over more
than a millennium gave way to a new
empiricism--a new and urgent interest in
discovering the foundations of knowledge itself,
not so much in "reason" as in "experience."
7. And in literature--under the stress of these
revolutionary changes--writers used classical
forms (like epic, ode, epistle, and satire) to
express revolutionary new subjects and ideas.
Women gained an unprecedented power as both
readers and writers (a power not to be matched
until the twentieth century). And the age gave
rise, as well, to whole new genres--most
importantly the newspaper, the magazine, the
traveler's tale, and the novel (the name of
which means, simply, new!).
In order to trace these revolutionary changes,
we will begin with a look at the tremendous
political crisis of the English Civil War
(1642-1649) and the intellectual and spiritual
crises it both reflected and produced. We will
read writers such as John Bunyan and Margaret
Fell Fox, as they try to recover ground for
religious certainty by privileging the private
experience of the Spirit; others like Milton,
Locke, Hobbes, and Sprat, as they attempt to
find empirical grounds for religious, political,
and scientific knowledge--as well as a position
from which they can attain personal fulfillment
and happiness. We will end this portion of the
course with the work of
poet-dramatist-satirist-critic John Dryden
(1631-1700), who poignantly embodies both the
old and the new, and whose career reflects the
upheaval and intellectual uncertainty of the
time.
Next we will move on to the early- to mid-
eighteenth century--where we will encounter an
unprecedented range of female voices, while
tracing the rise of two new (and at first
related) forms: journalism and the novel. We
will see how in this brand new fictional form
Daniel Defoe represented the new, empirical
strain, while Henry Fielding represented the
traditional "reasonable" one; and how writers
like Alexander Pope and Jonathan
Swift--meditating on issues debated by thinkers
of the time--gave vibrant new life to
traditional forms like the epic, the satire, and
moral epistle.
During the final weeks of the course, we will
move on to explore yet more new social and
literary currents--in the middle-class lyrics of
"sensibility," in the new aesthetic category of
the "sublime," in the traditional but now
pessimistic moral philosophy of Samuel Johnson,
and finally in the radical visions of William
Blake.
William Blake, of course, is equally famous as a
poet and as an artist--an anomaly that points up
a final important feature of the period. Poets,
artists, and critics of the eighteenth century
were deeply read in the philosophy of their own
day; they were also fascinated by the
ever-modern Roman poet-critic Horace (65-8 B.C.E.).
They wrote "Horatian epistles," adopted his idea
of poetic decorum, and above all pondered his
famous statement: ut pictura poesis ["like
painting is poetry"]--which to them suggested
that poetry and painting are "sister arts," the
one essential to the illumination of the other.
Thus the literature course will also be set in a
visual context--first through an evening showing
of the film Restoration; later through a field
trip to the Huntington Library--home of a
world-famous collection of English
eighteenth-century art.
Required Texts:
Daniel Defoe. A Journal of the Plague Year, ed.
Paula R. Backsheider. New York: Norton, 1722;
1992.
Defoe. Moll Flanders. New York: Penguin, 1722;
1984.
Robert Demaria Jr., ed. British Literature,
1640-1789: An Anthology. London: Blackwell,
1996.
Henry Fielding. Joseph Andrews. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1742; 1984.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels. New York:
Signet, 1726; 1983.
John Harold Wilson, ed. Six Restoration Plays.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959.
In addition you will be required to read a
notebook of hand-outs and brief supplementary
readings (SR).
Required Work:
(1) Prompt and regular attendance at all class
sessions, including the film on February 25 and
the field trip on Saturday, April 5. (Make
arrangements now!) Roll will be taken, and final
grades dropped one step--e.g. from a B to a
C--for each absence after the first two. (Thus
six absences will be regarded as grounds for
failure of the course.)
(2) Reading assignments to be completed before
the dates for which they are assigned (i.e. in
time for class discussion). If you must miss a
class, you should get class notes from another
student and include them in your notebook with
proper acknowledgment. Missing a class is no
reason not to be fully aware of what went on on
that day--including possible changes in the
schedule.
(3) A midterm exam.
(4) Four response papers (3-4 pages
each)--growing out of your engagement with texts
in each section of the course.
(5) A comprehensive final exam.
Note: Late work will be accepted, but will be
marked down one half grade for each class day
after the due date. Under extraordinary
circumstances, I will consider an extension
without penalty-- provided that I am consulted
in advance and that the circumstances seem
serious enough to warrant such an extension.
Grading Factors:
(1) Attendance, preparation and discussion 15
(2) Midterm 20
(3) Response papers (10% each) 40
(4) Final exam
25
100%
Note: All work must be turned in, and be of a
passing quality (even if it is turned in so late
as to have fallen--theoretically--to an F), in
order to result in a passing grade in the
course.
Grading Options:
1. A - F
2. Credit/No Credit (non-majors only)
Manuscript Style:
Papers are to be typed double-space in a
12-point font (this syllabus is typed in
12-point Times), and printed on a laser-quality
printer. They should be handed in on separate
sheets of 8 1/2 X 11 bond paper, stapled in the
upper left-hand corner. Margins should be one
inch; paragraphs are to be indented five spaces.
Spaces should not be skipped between paragraphs.
Any notes or bibliography you may want to use
must follow the MLA Handbook, copies of which
are available in both the library and the
bookstore.
Always keep hard-copies of all your work.
Documents can get lost--both from my desk and
from your disk, whether hard or floppy. Should
this occur, I will expect you to be able to
produce a copy immediately; otherwise, I will be
forced to count the paper as late beginning with
the day of your failure to do so. (See above for
general policy on late papers.)
Note: Electronically submitted work will not be
accepted. It is your responsibility to leave
enough time to submit a clean hard copy for
evaluation.
Academic Honesty:
Plagiarism occurs whenever the true author of a
piece of prose, of an idea, or of a line of
thought is not the person who claims to be the
author. Plagiarism can occur in varying degrees,
and will be penalized--in this class as in all
others at the College--in proportion to its
severity. Papers in which plagiarism is
sufficiently serious will receive an F, and
student's name will be turned in to the Dean of
Students. A repeated act of plagiarism will
result in an automatic F in the entire course,
in addition to any action taken by the Office of
Student Life (which can include suspension from
the College). A number of such serious sanctions
have been imposed in recent years.
A particularly common and egregious form of
plagiarism is the down-loading of materials from
papers posted by others on various web sites.
Please be aware that faculty have the tools to
identify any work unfairly borrowed from the
web--as well as other sources.
If you are in doubt about the need for
documentation of borrowed material, please feel
free to consult me or any other professor on
campus. Also be sure that you have mastered the
material in the 2001-2003 College Catalog,
25-28. Ignorance of this material will not be
regarded as an excuse.
ADA Policy:
If you have any disabling condition that may
require some special arrangements in order to
meet course requirements, please begin by
contacting the Office of Learning Support
Services. I will be happy to provide any
accommodations regarded by the Director as
appropriate, but am not in a position to offer
such accommodations independently. Short of
actual accommodations, however, please feel
welcome to talk with me about anything I can do
to help you succeed in the course.
The Final Exam:
The final examination will be given only at the
published time (Thursday, May 15, 10:30 to
12:30), so plan your departure for the summer
accordingly. Plane tickets purchased by students
not consulting the schedule (or not informing
their families of the schedule) will not be
accepted as an excuse for missing (or
rescheduling) the exam. If you should find
yourself scheduled for three final exams on a
single day, you are (as the catalogue notes)
entitled to request an adjustment from your
professors.
The Schedule (subject to change as necessary):
I. The Age of Revolution (1640 - 1660):
Backgrounds to the Restoration and Eighteenth
Century.
Feb. 6 Introduction to the course, to the
period, and to a recurring theme: The Pursuit
[and
redefinition] of Happiness--or "the Choice
of Life." Vanity Texts (SR, 5 - 10).
11 Britain in Crisis: The English Civil War and
the Execution of Charles I. Read
"The World is Turned Upside Down," Demaria, 1 - 3;
Documents on the death
of the king, 7 - 8; selection from Hobbes's
Leviathan, 9 - 12; Margaret Fell Fox, 309 - 313;
and John Bunyan, 355 - 58. Also see (and carefully
study) SR, 11 - 19.
13 Poets of the mid-seventeenth century. Read
Robert Herrick, Demaria, 15 - 21; John
Milton, 53 - 55; Richard Crashaw, 305 - 309; Abraham
Cowley, 314 - 16; Richard
Lovelace, 319-21; Andrew Marvell, "Bermudas,"
336 - 37, 343 - 48; and Henry Vaughan,
348 - 51. For Crashaw see SR, 21 - 22.
18 Grounds for Consensus: Ideas and Attitudes,
1660 - 1688. Read John Locke, 389 - 94;
Thomas
Sprat, 401-403; and Samuel Pepys, 394-401.
II. Restoration Literature (1660-1688): Poetry,
Satire, Drama.
20 John Dryden (1631 - 1700): (1) Lyric and
Satiric. Read Introduction, Demaria, 369 - 70;
"To
the Memory of Mr. Oldham," 378 - 79; "A Song for
St. Cecilia's Day," 384 - 86;
"MacFlecknoe," 372 - 78. Also see SR, 24 - 28
(Dryden), and 33 - 35 (epic). First
response paper
due.
25 Dryden (2): Dramatic--Restoration Tragedy.
Read All for Love; or, The World Well
Lost
(1678), Wilson, 169 - 243.
25 7:15 p.m. Film: Restoration. Media Center
202. Attendance required.
27 Restoration Comedy: William Congreve's
Way of
the World (1700), Wilson, 319 - 89.
Mar. 4 Restoration Women of Letters: Read
Katherine Philips, Demaria 358 - 69; Jane Barker,
483 - 85; Lady Mary Chudleigh, 485 - 90; Aphra Behn,
(Intro.), 403 - 404, 411 - 18.
For Philips also see SR, 29 - 32.
6 Day for Discussion.
III. Writers of the Earlier Eighteenth Century
(1688 - 1745): Journal, Novel, Poetry, Satire,
Epistle.
11 The Rise of Journalism and the Novel as "True
History": Daniel Defoe (1660 - 1731).
Read Demaria,
490 - 97, and selection from the London Gazette,
527 - 28. Then read
A Journal of the Plague Year: Backscheider's Preface and pp. 1 - 23 (graves and
carts);
mid-53 - 55; 66 - 73 (sorrows and outrages
of daily life); last paragraph of 140 through
143 (reactions to trauma); second paragraph of
178 through 179; 190 - 193 (end:
the lifting of
the plague).
13 The Eighteenth-Century Novel (1): Defoe's
Moll Flanders (1722)--entire.
18 Moll Flanders discussion: on the new
capitalist heroine and the nature of her
repentance.
Second response paper due.
20 Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745): (1) Lyric and
Satiric. Read Demaria (intro.), 566 - 77, poems,
654 - 66, and "A Modest Proposal," 646 - 51.
Spring Break, March 22-30.
Apr. 1 Jonathan Swift (2): Narrative. Read
Gulliver's Travels (1726), Parts I and IV
(25 - 92; 239 - 319). What do you think are Swift's
satiric targets in these narratives?
3 Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744): (1) Lyric and
Satiric. Read "The Rape of the
Lock (1714)," Demaria, 701 - 22. Also read Mary Molesworth Monck, "On
Marinda's Toilette," 677 - 78; and George Cheyne,
selection from "The English
Malady," 659 - 63. Also see Conclusion to the 1741
Dunciad, SR, 36 .
5 (Saturday). Field Trip to Huntington Library
Gardens and Galleries,
Noon - 5:00 p.m.
8 Pope (2): Reflective and Philosophical. Read
"An Essay on Man," Epistle I (1733 - 34),
SR,
38 - 43; and "Universal Prayer," SR, 44.
10 Eighteenth-Century Women of Letters. Read
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea
(1661 - 1720), Demaria, 530 - 549; and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689 - 1762),
768 - 782. Also read her letter to the Countess of
Mar, London, September 1727,
SR, 45.
15 Midterm exam (comprehensive to date).
17 The Eighteenth-Century Novel (3) and "Comic
Epic": Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews
(1742)--entire. Also read Genesis 39 and Luke
10.29 - 37; and Augustinian
Allegory in Joseph Andrews, SR, 46.
22
Joseph Andrews discussion:
Come prepared to compare this novel to Defoe's
Moll
Flanders in terms of method and purpose.
What is similar? What is different?
Third response paper due.
IV. Writers of the Later Eighteenth Century
(1745 - 1789): Poetry, Satire, Criticism,
Philosophical Narrative.
24 Lyrics of the Eighteenth Century: Sublimity
and Sensibility. Read Matthew Prior, Demaria,
566 - 73; Thomas Gray, 969 - 974; William Collins,
"Ode to Evening,"
995 - 97; Christopher Smart, 1003-1007; Oliver
Goldsmith, 1054-64; William Cowper,
1064 - 73;
Hannah More, 1134 - 39. Also read Gray's "Ode on a
Distant Prospect of Eton
College" (SR, 48) and
Eighteenth-century hymns (SR, 49-53).
29 "Nature" and "The Sublime": Aesthetic Theory
and Practice. Read Joshua Reynolds,
Demaria, 1021 - 26; and Edmund Burke, 1030 - 37.
Come prepared to discuss the light--
if any--these theoretical works shed on the
poetry you have been reading.
May 1 Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784): (1) Lyric and
Meditative. Read Demaria (intro.),
836 - 38; "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet" (SR,
54); prayers and meditations
(SR, 59 - 63); "The Vanity of Human Wishes," Demaria, 843 - 52.
6 Johnson (2): Reflective. Read
Rambler, Number
2, Demaria, 852 - 55; Numbers 32 and 128
(SR,
55 - 58); and The History of Rasselas, Prince of
Abyssinia (1759), 863 - 922.
Also read Backgrounds to Rasselas, SR, 64 - 66.
8 From "Neoclassical" to "Romantic": Johnson to
William Blake (1757 - 1827). Read
Selections from
Songs of Innocence and Experience, Demaria,
1169 - 75.
13 Last day of class. Review of the course.
Fourth response paper due.
May 15 (Thursday) Final Exam, 10:30-12:30.
(Papers and finals will be returned to your
campus mailbox. If you wish to have them sent to
your home, please provide a self- addressed
envelope with enough postage to cover their
mailing.)
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