Prof.
Francus
English 666: Restoration and 18th-Century Literature
Tuesdays, 4:00-6:50
G-18 Colson Hall
Office: 227 Colson Hall
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:00 – 11:15 and by appointment
Email: [email protected] (or [email protected])
Course Description:
Eighteenth-Century British literature can be broadly categorized into four periods: the Restoration
(1660-1700); the Augustan period (1700-1740); midcentury (1740-1770); and the Age of Revolutions
(1770-1800). As a survey, this course provides students a sense of the literature within each period, as
well as enables students to track the development of genres across periods, and develop a sense of
eighteenth-century literature as a whole. English 666 provides the essential framework for eighteenth-
century studies, and supports studies in early American literature, Romantic literature, Victorian
literature, and early modern British literature.
Course Objectives:
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• To develop an understanding of 18 -century British literature within its cultural and historical context.
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• To analyze 18 -century literature from a variety of critical and theoretical frameworks.
• To analyze the mechanisms of canon formation and the import of canonicity within literary studies.
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• To recognize and analyze 18 -century British literature within broader literary contexts.
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• To provide students with guided research and writing experience in 18 -century studies.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Analyze the development of genres in 18th-century British literature.
• Analyze 18th-century British literature within its cultural and historical context.
• Analyze contemporary scholarship on 18th-century British literature.
• Identify and evaluate the mechanisms of canonization.
• Evaluate 18th-century British literature in broader contexts (for instance, in light of British
literature that precedes and follows it; in the context of early American literature; etc.)
• Engage in archival research.
Course Schedule:
January 9 Introduction
January 16 Restoration Drama
Aphra Behn, The Rover
William Congreve, The Way of the World
John Dryden, Essay on Dramatic Poesy (available on Jack Lynch’s 18th-
century e-text page)
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Hume, Robert D. “Jeremy Collier and the Future of London Theatre in
1698,” Studies in Philology, Vol. 96 #4 (Autumn 1999): 480-511.
January 23 Restoration Poetry
John Dryden: “MacFlecknoe,” “Absalom and Achitophel,” “Alexander’s
Feast,” “Ode to St. Cecilia,” “To the Memory of Anne Killigrew,”
“To Mr. Oldham,” “Annus Mirabilis”
John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester): “The Imperfect Enjoyment,” “Constancy,”
“Satire on Charles II,” “Upon Nothing,” “Love (to) a Woman”
Katherine Philips, “Orinda to Lucasia (on Parting),” “Friendship’s Mystery”
Andreadis, Harriet. “Re-Configuring Early Modern Friendship: Katherine
Philips and Homoerotic Desire,” Studies in English Literature,
1500-1900 (SEL), Vol. 46 #3 (2006): 523-42.
Ellenzweig, Sarah. “’Hitherto Propertied’: Rochester’s Aristocratic
Alienation and the Paradox of Class Formation,” English Literary
History (ELH), Vol. 69 #3 (2002): 703-725.
January 30 Restoration Novel
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
Kroll, Richard. “’Tales of Love and Gallantry’: The Politics of Oroonoko,”
Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 67 # 4 (December 2004): 573-605.
MacDonald, Joyce Green. “The Disappearing African Woman: Imoinda in
Oroonoko after Behn,” English Literary History (ELH), Vol. 66 #1
(Spring 1999): 71-86.
February 6 Augustan Prose
Selections from Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator and
The Tatler
Pollock, Anthony. “Neutering Addison and Steele: Aesthetic Failure and the
Spectatorial Public Sphere,” English Literary History (ELH), Vol. 74 #3
(Fall 2007): 707-34.
Powell, Manushag N. “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: Spectation
and the Eighteenth-Century Public Sphere,” Eighteenth-Century Studies,
Vol. 45 # 2 (2012): 255-76.
Lesson Plan Due
February 13 Augustan Novel
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Wheeler, Roxann. “Christians, Savages, and Slaves,” from The Complexion of
Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture
(2000): 50-89.
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February 20 Augustan Poetry
Alexander Pope: “Essay on Criticism,” “Essay on Man,” “Rape of the Lock,”
“Epistle to Arbuthnot”
Jonathan Swift: “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift,” “Description of a City
Shower,” “The Lady’s Dressing Room”
Hernandez, Alex Eric. “Commodity and Religion in Pope’s ‘Rape of the Lock,’”
Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 (SEL), Vol. 48 #3 (Summer
2008): 569-584.
Marshall, Ashley. “Swift on ‘Swift’: From The Author upon Himself to The Life
and Genuine Character,” Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 75 #3
(Autumn 2012): 327-63.
Periodical Edition Due
February 27 Augustan Drama/Mid-Century Drama
Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers
George Lillo, The London Merchant
Freeman, Lisa A. “Tragic Flaws: Genre and Ideology in Lillo’s London
Merchant,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 98 #3 (1999): 539-61.
Wilson, Brett D. “Bevil’s Eyes: Or, How Crying at The Conscious Lovers Could
Save Britain,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 45 #4 (2012): 497-518.
March 6 Mid-Century Prose
Samuel Johnson: The Preface to the Dictionary; The Preface to Shakespeare;
Selections from Lives of the Poets (Milton, Pope, Gray)
DeMaria, Jr., Robert and Gwin J. Kolb. “Johnson’s Dictionary and
Dictionary Johnson,” The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 28
(1998): 19-43.
Canon Essay Due
March 13: Spring Break
March 20 Mid-Century Novel
Samuel Richardson, Pamela
Henry Fielding, Shamela
Straub, Kristina. “Interpreting the Woman Servant: Pamela and Elizabeth
Canning, 1740-1760,” from Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism,
and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century
Britain (2009): 47-82.
Warner, William B. “The Pamela Media Event,” from Licensing
Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684-
1750 (1998): 176-230.
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March 27 Mid-Century Poetry
James Thomson: “The Seasons: Winter,” “Rule Britannia”
Christopher Smart: “Jubilate Agno,” “A Song to David”
Thomas Gray: “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” “Ode on a Distant
Prospect of Eton College,” “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat,” “The
Bard,” “The Fatal Sisters,” “On the Death of Richard West”
Ennis, Daniel J. “Christopher Smart’s Cat Revisited: ‘Jubilate Agno” and The
‘Ars Poetica’ Tradition,” South Atlantic Review, Vol. 65 #1 (Winter
2000): 1-23.
Zionkowski, Linda. “Bridging the Gulf Between: The Poet and the Audience in
the work of Gray,” English Literary History (ELH), Vol. 58 #2 (Summer
1991): 331-50.
Material Culture Analysis Due
April 3 Age of Revolutions Drama and Poetry
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal
Robert Burns: “A Red, Red Rose,” “To a Mouse,” “To a Louse,” “Tam
O’Shanter,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “The Cotter’s Saturday Night”
Ann Yearsley: “Addressed to Sensibility,” “A Poem on the Inhumanity of
the Slave Trade”
Donoghue, Frank. “Avoiding the ‘Cooler Tribunal of the Study’: Richard
Brinsley Sheridan’s Writer’s Block and Late Eighteenth-Century
Print Culture,” English Literary History (ELH), Vol. 68 #4
(Winter 2001): 831-56.
Kahn, Madeleine. “Hannah More and Ann Yearsley: A Collaboration
Across the Class Divide,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture,
Vol. 25 (1996): 203-223.
Whatley, Christopher A. “’It is Said that Burns was a Radical’: Contest,
Concession, and the Political Legacy of Robert Burns, ca. 1796-
1859,” Journal of British Studies, Vol. 50 # 3 (July 2011): 639-66.
April 10 Age of Revolutions Novel
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
Scholarship Analysis Essay due
April 17 Age of Revolutions Novel
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent
O’Donnell, Katherine. “Castle Stopgap: Historical Reality, Literary
Realism, and Oral Culture,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 22
#1 (Fall 2009): 115-30.
April 24 Ages of Revolutions Prose
Selections from Frances Burney, Court Journals
Selections from Edmund Burke, Reflections on The Revolution in France;
Selections from Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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April 26 Research essay due via email
Schedule may change at the instructor’s discretion.
Course Assignments:
A lesson plan for a text on the syllabus. (approximately 3-4 pp.; 15% of final grade).
An edition of a number (i.e. an issue) of an 18th-century periodical, with a statement of your
editorial principles (approximately 4 pp.; 15% of final grade).
An analysis of a text on the syllabus in terms of its canonicity (approximately 3-4 pp.; 10% of
final grade).
A material culture analysis of an 18th-century text from WVU’s Rare Book Collection.
(approximately 2-3 pp.; 10% of final grade)
A scholarship analysis essay, in which you write an analysis of a scholarly article that you are
using for your final research paper (approximately 3-4 pp.; 15% of final grade). Please include a copy
of the article with your essay.
A conference-length research paper on an 18th-century literary or cultural text (approximately 8-
10 pp.; 35% of final grade).
Submission of Assignments:
Your papers should be typed (11- or 12-point font), with sufficient space in the margins for comments.
(One-inch margins will do). Papers should be double-spaced.
Your papers should reflect careful reading and thinking about your subject. Do not summarize a work, or
subsume your voice to another scholar.
You may use either The MLA Handbook or The Chicago Manual of Style for formatting and
documentation—but whichever one you choose, please use it consistently.
It is highly recommended that you keep a back-up of every assignment that you hand in.
Hand in papers on time. Late submissions will receive a lower grade unless the student has a viable reason
(such as illness, familial emergency) for his/her lateness, and has notified me within 24 hours of the
original due date. Your grade will be lowered a fraction for every day your work is late (ex. B to B- for one
day late).
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Grading Criteria:
A (90-100) – Excellent work; the assignments for this course have been completed in a professional and
timely manner. The written assignments are clearly organized, choose compelling evidence to substantiate
the analysis, and engage with the subject at hand in a thoughtful and thought-provoking manner. Written
work requires no substantive or stylistic revisions.
B (80-89) – Good work; the assignments for the course have been completed in a professional and timely
manner. The written assignments show substantial engagement with the subject at hand, but the analysis is
either partially incomplete, involving weak evidence, or manifests some difficulty with organization.
Written work requires substantive revisions, but few or no stylistic ones.
C (70-79) – Average work; the assignments for the course have been completed, but not necessarily in a
professional or timely manner. The written assignments show effort by the student, but the analysis is
incomplete, includes inappropriate evidence (or a lack of evidence), or shows significant difficulties with
organization. Written work requires significant substantive or stylistic revisions.
D (60-69) - Less than average work; the assignments for the course have not been completed in a
professional or timely manner. The written assignments show a lack of effort on the part of the student,
and a lack of engagement with the assignment. Written assignments lack analysis, evidence, and
organization; extensive substantive and stylistic revisions are necessary.
F (<59) – Inadequate work; the assignments for the course have not been completed. Written assignments,
when submitted, show a significant lack of effort on the part of the student, and a lack of engagement with
the assignment and the subject matter of the course. Such work is marked by the absence of analysis,
evidence, and organization; engagement with the course materials is necessary before extensive revisions
are even possible.
Online Resources (via WVU Library Database System):
Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO) – an archive of over 136,000 digitized eighteenth-century
texts in literature, history, geography, theology, philosophy, politics, science, medicine, and law. Primarily
British works, but ECCO includes some American, French, and Italian texts as well. Texts are searchable,
and can be downloaded. The primary database for scholars in the field.
Early English Books Online (EBBO) – an archive of over 125,000 digitized texts published between 1473
and 1700 in Great Britain, in fields including literature, history, philosophy, theology, science,
mathematics, and education. For the purposes of our course, this database is most useful for Restoration
texts (1660-1700).
British Periodicals – an archive of 500+ digitized British periodicals from 1680-1930. For our course, this
is most useful for book reviews and theatre reviews, and for a sense of the journalistic milieu of the period.
17th and 18th-Century Burney Newspapers – a database of the extensive newspaper collection of Charles
Burney, Jr. with scanned, searchable versions of the newspapers.
JSTOR – a text-based archive of 1,000+ academic journals, with academic articles available for
downloading.
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Project Muse – a text-based archive of scholarly books and journals published by 120+ presses, which is
searchable and available for downloading.
MLA International Bibliography (via EBSCO Host) – a comprehensive bibliography of world literature,
linguistics, folklore, and film studies. It does not provide texts, although the MLA Bibliography has links
to WVU holdings that will guide to you access.
WorldCat – a database of 10,000+ libraries worldwide. If our library does not have what you need,
WorldCat will guide you to the closest collection with the resource. (Note: our interlibrary loan services
are excellent.)
Online Resources (General)
Jack Lynch’s Eighteenth-Century E-Texts: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/etext.html
Voice of the Shuttle Restoration and 18th-Century Page: http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id=2738
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Home Page: http://asecs.press.jhu.edu/
Academic Dishonesty:
West Virginia University’s definition of academic dishonesty is available in Student Conduct Code
(http://campuslife.wvu.edu/r/download/220286), pages 6-7:
“Academic dishonesty. The term “academic dishonesty” means plagiarism; cheating and dishonest
practices in connection with examinations, papers, and/or projects; and forgery, misrepresentation, or fraud
as it relates to academic or educational matters.
1) The term “plagiarism” means the use, by paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished
work of another person without full and clear acknowledgment, including, but not limited to, the
unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another individual engaged in the selling of term papers or
other academic materials.
2) The terms “cheating and dishonest practices in connection with examinations, papers, and/or projects”
means (i) giving or receiving of any unauthorized assistance in taking quizzes, tests, examinations, or any
other assignment for a grade; (ii) depending upon the aid of sources beyond those authorized by the
instructor in quizzes, tests, examinations, writing papers, preparing reports, solving problems, or carrying
out other assignments; (iii) the acquisition or use, without permission, of tests or other academic material
belonging to a member of the University faculty or staff; or (iv) engaging in any behavior specifically
prohibited by a faculty member in the course syllabus or class discussion.
3) The terms “forgery, misrepresentation, or fraud as it relates to academic or educational matters” means
(i) wrongfully altering, or causing to be altered, the record of any grade or other educational record; (ii) use
of University documents or instruments of identification with the intent to defraud; (iii) presenting false
data or information or intentionally misrepresenting one’s records for admission, registration, or withdrawal
from the University or from a University course; (iv) knowingly presenting false data or information or
intentionally misrepresenting one’s records for personal gain; (v) knowingly furnishing the results of
research projects or experiments for the inclusion in another’s work without proper citation; or (vi)
knowingly furnishing false statements in any University academic proceeding.”
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WVU Academic Integrity Statement:
West Virginia University’s Academic Integrity Statement is available on the Faculty Senate website at
http://facultysenate.wvu.edu/files/d/d1512e54-863d-412a-a515-d82455cc203c/academic-integrity-
statement_revised-october-2014.pdf:
“The integrity of the classes offered by any academic institution solidifies the foundation of its mission and
cannot be sacrificed to expediency, ignorance, or blatant fraud. Therefore, I will enforce rigorous standards
of academic integrity in all aspects and assignments of this course. For the detailed policy of West Virginia
University regarding the definitions of acts considered to fall under academic dishonesty and possible
ensuing sanctions, please see the West Virginia University Academic Catalog at
http://catalog.wvu.edu/undergraduate/coursecreditstermsclassification/#academicintegritytext. Should you
have any questions about possibly improper research citations or references, or any other activity that may
be interpreted as an attempt at academic dishonesty, please see me before the assignment is due to discuss
the matter.”
Please note the WVU’s Sale of Course Material Syllabus Statement: “All course materials, including
lectures, class notes, quizzes, exams, handouts, presentations, and other materials provided to students for
this course are protected intellectual property. As such, the unauthorized purchase or sale of these materials
may result in disciplinary sanctions under the Campus Student Code.”
Inclusivity Statement:
West Virginia University’s Inclusive Statement is available on the Faculty Senate website at
http://facultysenate.wvu.edu/files/d/e3769f38-b515-4912-9ba0-0b4ff819d340/inclusivitystatement.pdf:
The West Virginia University community is committed to creating and fostering a positive learning and
working environment based on open communication, mutual respect, and inclusion. If you are a person
with a disability and anticipate needing any type of accommodation in order to participate in this class,
please advise me and make appropriate arrangements with the Office of Accessibility Services (293-6700).
For more information on West Virginia University's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, please see
http://diversity.wvu.edu.
Adverse Weather Commitment:
West Virginia University’s Adverse Weather Commitment is available on the Faculty Senate website at
http://facultysenate.wvu.edu/files/d/5a22c706-1eca-48a8-8884-5b66106a29bf/adverse-weather-
commitment.pdf:
In the event of inclement or threatening weather, everyone should use his or her best judgment regarding
travel to and from campus. Safety should be the main concern. If you cannot get to class because of adverse
weather conditions, you should contact me as soon as possible. Similarly, if I am unable to reach our class
location, I will notify you of any cancellation or change as soon as possible, using MIX, Gmail, and/or
eCampus to prevent you from embarking on any unnecessary travel. If you cannot get to class because of
weather conditions, I will make allowances relative to required attendance policies, as well as any
scheduled tests, quizzes, or other assessments.
