This course explores the literatures produced across roughly two generations following the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, during which time literary patronage gradually gave way to an early print capitalism. What emerged from that context was an exciting period defined by great satires, often obscene imagery, experimental prose, and novel media. This course examines the era’s formal innovations while touching on a number of themes that remain pressing to this day, including questions of politics, religion, and power, the tension between classical tradition and scientific discovery, shifting categories of identity such as race, class, and gender, and censorship and the role of the arts in the public sphere. Authors studied may include Behn, Bunyan, Rochester, Dryden, Defoe, Haywood, Montagu, Pope, and Swift.
This course explores the literatures produced across roughly two generations following the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, during which time literary patronage gradually gave way to an early print capitalism. What emerged from that context was an exciting period defined by great satires, often obscene imagery, experimental prose, and novel media. This course examines the era’s formal innovations while touching on a number of themes that remain pressing to this day, including questions of politics, religion, and power, the tension between classical tradition and scientific discovery, shifting categories of identity such as race, class, and gender, and censorship and the role of the arts in the public sphere. Authors studied may include Behn, Bunyan, Rochester, Dryden, Defoe, Haywood, Montagu, Pope, and Swift.
