18thc_menwomenFriday, January 5th

Course Introduction

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Monday, January 8th

Introduction to the Eighteenth Century (xxxiii-lxix)

 Pope, from An Essay on Man, including “The Design” and Epistle 1. (BABL 18thC: 575-579) <Outline of An Essay on Man>

 Wheatley, “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth” (BABL 18thC: 1017-1018)

 Glossary: Enlightenment; Essay; The Great Chain of Being; antithesis; apostrophe; rhetorical questions, alliteration; heroic couplet and other Rhetorical Figures: zeugma, chiasmus, parallelism, anaphora (click on link for definitions and examples);

Another definition of anaphora: “A rhetorical device involving the repetition of a word or group of words in successive clauses” (from The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 4th edition 37)

Other vocabulary introduced in class: dissenters, Deism, Anglicanism, “tabula rasa,” Neoclassicism, genre, verisimilitude,  mimesis, poetic form, “fancy + judgment = wit,” gothic, sensibility, and the sublime

*If you do not yet have your anthology, you will be able to find multiple copies of Pope and Wheatley’s poetry on the shelves of the main library. You can also find “Essay on Man,” Epistle 1 on the internet, although not “The Design.” Wheatley’s poem is also available.*

Wednesday,  January 10th

 Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated (BABL 18thC: 759-765) <Outline of The Vanity of Human Wishes>

Johnson, from The Rambler [On Fiction] (BABL 18thC: 766-769) and On Becoming Acquainted with Our Real Characters] (BABL 18thC: 774-776)

Johnson, from A Dictionary of the English Language (BABL 18thC: 783-787)

Glossary: Heroic Couplet and Essay 

In-Class Writing Assignment: Choose one question posed by Alexander Pope in An Essay on Man (i.e. lines 49-50; lines 155-156; 173-178; line 185; lines 195-196; ). After writing down the quote, paraphrase it and then analyze it. How does Pope himself want the reader to answer the question? Why? In other words, what “system of ethics” does Pope intend to impart in the poem? (“The Design” 575).

Grading Scale for all in-class writing assignments: All in-class writing assignments will be graded on a scale of 1.0 to 4.0, corresponding the A-F numeric system used at UGA. In order to receive 4 points, your response must be thoughtful, well-written, and supported by specific evidence from the text at hand.

Friday, January 12th: REVISED

Reread: Wheatley poem assigned on 1/8 and Johnson’s writing assigned on 1/10. While reading look for examples of rhetorical questions and rhetorical devices. What beliefs are shared by the writers and where do they diverge in their thinking and forms of expression?

Outline of “The Vanity of Human Wishes”

In-Class Writing:  What beliefs are shared by the Pope, Wheatley, and Johnson and where do they diverge in their thinking and forms of expression? Your focus should be on Wheatley and Johnson.

Jonathan Swift, “The Lady’s Dressing Room” (BABL 18thC: 379-380)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem Called The Lady’s Dressing Room” (BABL 18thC: 605-606)

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rosa_landscape

Monday, January 15th 

MLK Day / No School

Wednesday, January 17th  / NO SCHOOL DUE TO WINTER

Friday, January 19th

REVISED TO REFLECT MISSED CLASS: You’ll need both anthologies for today’s discussion

Please come to class with a short written assignment: I’d like you to write down 2-5 qualities the writers read for today associate with

1. realist fiction (i.e. Johnson’s essay, originally assigned on 1/10 )

2. the “sublime” (i.e. readings from BABL B and attached account of The Sublime and the Beautiful )

3. the “beautiful”

READINGS:

Johnson, from The Rambler [On Fiction] (BABL 18thC: 766-769)

Longinus, from On the Sublime (BABL B 229-230)

from The Spectator, No. 412  (23 June 1712) (BABL B 231-233)

from Johnson’s Dictionary (BABL B 234-235)

Burke, from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (BABL B 235-240)

Kant, from Observations on Feeling of the Sublime and the Beautiful (BABL B 240-242)

The Sublime and the Beautiful (Please print, read, and bring to class)

Houses: Longleat House and Images; Harewood House and images (You do not need to print this up.)

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Monday, January 22nd

Horace Walpole, ALL OF The Castle of Otranto (BABL 18thC: link to Broadview site; you will need a passcode to access the material).  I expect you to fully PRINT OUT this short tale and bring it into class with you.

William Collins, “Ode to Fear” (BABL 18thC: http://sites.broadviewpress.com/bablonline/files/2012/05/Vol-3-Web-Collins-Ode-to-Fear.pdf)

Glossary: Ode (Regular Ode) and Lyric; see also <Lyric Poetry>

From Walpole’s Preface to the first edition of The Castle of Otranto (1764)

The following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed in Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest age of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is purest Italian. If the story was written near the time when it is supposed to have happened, it must have been between 1095, the era of the first crusade, and 1243, the date of the last, or not long afterwards.

From Walpole’s Preface to the second edition of The Castle of Otranto (1765)

[The Castle of Otranto] was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. Invention has not been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life. But if, in the latter species, Nature has cramped imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally excluded from old romances.

 and

Desirous of leaving the powers of fancy at liberty to expatiate through the boundless realms of invention, and thence of creating more interesting situations, [the author] wished to conduct the mortal agents in his drama according to the rules of probability; in short, to make them think, speak, and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions.

 

Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, UK

Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, UK

The Gallery at Strawberry Hill

The Gallery at Strawberry HIll

In-Class Writing: Walpole says that he wants to have his characters “think, speak, and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions.” What are the extraordinary positions that he puts them in and how does he employ an aesthetics of the sublime to achieve the atmosphere

that he wants to achieve? ( Does he draw upon an aesthetic of the beautiful as well? In order to receive full credit, you must cite at least one specific example from the text with pagination.

Wednesday, January 24th

Continue discussion of Walpole and Collins. Reread the “Ode to Fear” and the description of Lyric Poetry

Introduction to Romanticism (BABL B 1-30)

Friday, January 26th

The French Revolution: Contexts, Selections from Richard Price, Edmund Burke, and Thomas Paine (BABL B 47-56)

Selections from Women and Society: Contexts, William Blackstone, from Commentaries on the Laws of England (BABL B 115-117)

William Godwin, from Enquiry Concerning Political Justice <Godwin_RevControversy>.
READ ONLY sections on Justice and Obedience  (155-158); Revolutions and Political Associations (160-163); Dissolution of Government and the Appendix on Marriage (166-169)

Mary Wollstonecraft, READ ONLY from the Introduction to  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (BABL B 87-90), and pages 90-95 of Chapter 2 (ending with the last full paragraph, which concludes “. . . appears less wild.”

-“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners — time to restore to them their lost dignity — and make them, as a part of the human species, labor by reforming themselves to reform the world” (Chapter III)

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Monday, January 29th

Continue discussion of Price, Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft and Godwin

Wednesday, January 31st 

Introduction to Lyric Poetry

 Cowper, “The Castaway” (BABL 18thC: 886-888; click on title for .pdf)

Smith, Sonnet 1 (“The partial Muse, has from my earliest hours”)  and Sonnet 70 (“On being cautioned against walking on an headland overlooking the sea”) (BABL B 44 and 46)

Glossary: Sonnet and Lyric

Forms of Lyric Poetry

Be prepared for a very short closed book quiz: you will be asked to give a definition of a lyric poem and then distinguish between: a personal lyric, a sonnet, and an ode

Link to February’s Schedule