Syllabus

Textbook:

  • James Sambrook, The Eighteenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1700—1789, 2nd edn (Longman, 1993)

Primary texts:

Poems in David Fairer and Christine Gerrard, eds, Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). Titles marked # to be read separately in the specified editions.

Daniel Defoe

  • The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702) [PDF]
  • #Robinson Crusoe (1719) Ed. Michael Shinagel. Norton Critical Edition, 1994

Joseph Addison

  • Spectator essays (nos 1, 2, 3, 10, 69) [PDF]

Jonathan Swift

  • An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity in England (1708) [PDF]
  • #Gulliver’s Travels (1726) Ed. Albert J. Rivero. Norton Critical Edition, 2002
  • A Modest Proposal (1729)

Alexander Pope

  • Windsor-Forest (1713)
  • The Rape of the Lock (1714)
  • The Dunciad in Four Books (1743), Book I

James Thomson

  • The Seasons (1726—46), ‘Spring’

John Gay

  • Trivia: Or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716), Book II
  • #The Beggar’s Opera (1728) Ed. Bryan Loughrey and T. O. Treadwell. Penguin Classics, 1986

Samuel Johnson

  • ‘On the Death of Dr Robert Levet’ (1783)
  • #Rasselas (1759) Ed. Thomas Keymer. Oxford World Classics, 2009

Thomas Gray

  • Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751)

Oliver Goldsmith

  • The Deserted Village (1770)

William Cowper

  • The Task (1785), Book I

Charlotte Smith

  • Beachy Head (1806)
Published Oct. 17, 2014 1:38 PM