KEY INFORMATION

Anthology:  Please note that there is now a THIRD edition of the Robert DeMaria British Literature (Blackwells, 2008) anthology set for this course.  This is the one to buy.  If you have already obtained the second edition, don't worry.  The differences are not very great, and I will supply photocopies of any omitted material. 

Assessment:  This course is assessed by two 2500-word assessed essays [deadlines term 1, week 10 and term 2, week 10] and one three-hour exam in term 3.  The first essay relates to texts studied in term 1 of the course and you will be able to focus on one or more authors.  The second essay relates to topics studied in term 2 of the course and you will be asked to develop a project of your own and engage in some further reading.  The exam relates to authors and topics studied throughout the course.  You must not repeat material already discussed in your essays in this exam.

Lectures:  The lecture takes place on Mondays 3.00-4.00 in Ramphal R.1.13.

Seminars:  These take place on Tuesdays 1.00-2.00, 3.00-4.00 and 4.00-5.00.  All seminars take place in Professor O'Brien's office H512.

Office hours:  My office hours are Mondays 2.00-3.00 and Tuesdays 12.00-1.00.  Or just email with a query or for an appointment.

Key Readings:  Books to buy or obtain are listed below.  They have been ordered into the bookshop and are also available in limited numbers in the Library SRC.

Other Activities:  There will be a (compulsory) drama workshop in term 2 on Monday 1st March from 3.00-5.00 in the CAPITAL Studio and an optional visit to Compton Verney in term 2.

Digital Resources:  A key resource is Eighteenth-Century Collections Online which contains online early editions of all the set texts and excellent search facilities.  It can be an invaluable resource for primary research but should NOT be used instead of properly edited, modern editions of the set texts. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/main/electronicresources/databases/e/

Deadlines:  Please consult the departmental website for assessed essay deadlines.

Seminar Presentations: All students will be expected to give an informal seminar presentation as part of the course.

This course is for third-year students, and aims to give a broad introduction to the literature and culture of eighteenth-century Britain.  It moves through an eventful and often turbulent period in history, from the “Glorious” Revolution of 1688 to the American and French Revolutions towards the end of the eighteenth century.  This was a time of financial revolution which saw unprecedented growth (and some spectacular crashes) in the British economy, of commercial expansion (including the rapid growth of the book trade and of the number of readers), of continual warfare for European and colonial power, and of global exploration, including new British “discoveries” in the Pacific and in the African interior.  It was also the period that witnessed the creation and development of the modern form of the novel, the flowering of uniquely brilliant and biting literary satire, and the invention of the practice and literature of the perennially iconic English landscape garden.  The course will explore the period through the lens of five major themes, blending shorter extracts from the set anthology with some longer readings.

Books to buy or obtain:It is essential that students buy or borrow the correct edition of the De Maria anthology and of Clarissa.

If possible, please obtain the specified editions of other texts. 

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (World’s Classics), ed. Thomas Keymer

The recommend edition of the plays has gone out of print so I have ordered the Dover Thrift editions of Sheridan, School for Scandal and Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer into the bookshop.  I have also ordered the Penguin edition of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera.  But please feel free to obtain second-hand editions of collections featuring all three of these plays.

Robert de Maria, British Literature:  An Anthology (Blackwells, 2008, third edition)

Alexander Pope, Selected Poems, ed. Pat Rogers (World’s Classics)

Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, ed. Angus Ross (Penguin Classics)

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, ed. Melvyn New (Penguin Classics)

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, ed. Robert de Maria (Penguin Classics)

Seminar Schedule

Term 1

Week 1:  Introduction [no seminars this week]

 The Rise of the Novel

 Week 2:  Exploring the printed self:  Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (World’s Classics)

 Week 3:  Amatory Fiction:  Eliza Haywood, Fantomina (1724) [anthology]

 Week 4:  The Reformation of the Novel:  Samuel Richardson, Clarissa;  or, the History of a Young Lady (1747-48), ed. Angus Ross (Penguin Classics) [please read up to Letter 93 (or beyond!) and also and Clarissa’s deranged papers Letter 261

 Week 5:  The Autobiographical Self:  Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759-67, ed. Melvyn New (Penguin Classics) [please pay particular attention to volumes 1 and 2 and volumes 8 and 9]

 Week 6:  Reading week

 Literature, Politics and Satire

 Week 7:  Scales of Satire:  Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), ed. Robert De Maria (Penguin Classics) and A Modest Proposal (1729) in the anthology

 Week 8:  Subversive Politics:  John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728) in The Beggar’s Opera and Other Eighteenth-Century Plays, ed. Theresa Gallagher (Everyman)

 Week 9:  Authorship, Print and Satire:  Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728-43) [FOUR BOOK VERSION], in Selected Poems, ed. Pat Rogers (World’s Classics)

 Week 10:  Politics and Empire:  Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770) [anthology]

 Term 2

 Enlightenment, Travel and the Discovery of Society

 Week 1:  Imagining the Social Order:  Locke’s second treatise Of Civil Government (1690) [extract in anthology] and Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) [anthology] and Defoe, The True-Born Englishman (1704) [anthology]

 Week 2:  The Newtonian Imagination:  James Thomson, “Poem Sacred to the Memory of Isaac Newton” [photocopy]

Week 3: The Authority of the Past:  Samuel Johnson, preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) [anthology].  Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88), chapter 15 (photocopy) and chapter 23 [anthology].

Week 4: The Voyage Beyond:  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters, written 1716-18 [anthology], extracts from the accounts of the Cook Voyages to the Pacific (undertaken 1768-71 and 1772-75) and Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799) [photocopies]

 Drama

 Week 5:  Marital negotiations:  Congreve, The Way of the World (1700) [anthology] and Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1773) [Everyman collection]

 Week 6:  Reading week

 Week 7  Bad Manners:  She Stoops to Conquer continued and Sheridan, The School for Scandal (1777) [Everyman collection]

 Week 8:  Drama workshop [Monday 1st March, 3.00-5.00 in the CAPITAL Studio]

Countryside to Landscape

[including an optional visit to see the landscape gardens at Compton Verney]

 Week 9:  Pope, “Epistle to Burlington” (1731) in Selected Poems ed, Rogers.  Thomas Gray, “An Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard” (1751) [anthology]

 Week 10 Mary Collier, The Woman’s Labour (1739) [anthology] and George Crabbe extract from The Village (1783) [anthology]

Term 3

Week 1:  Revision

Week 2:  Revision