Restoration & 18th-Century Literature

This course surveys the variety of writing produced by men and women between 1660 and 1800, paying attention to the development of poetic forms and other characteristic modes of literary expression and exploring the philosophical and social-cultural ideals and realities of the period. Questions to be considered: How did the period itself view literature and literary history? Who should write poetry and what are the appropriate topics and forms of literature? What is the nature of authorship in a print culture? What aesthetic, social and political concerns are reflected in the characteristic discourses of the period--satire, sensibility, and the sublime?