ENGL 345 18th Century British Literature
A concentrated study of the several interlocking cultural contexts-historical, political, literary-that situate such quintessentially "18th century" genres as the epistolary, picaresque, and Gothic novels, travel and crime narratives, the Newgate pastoral, ballad-operas and mock- georgics, satire and the burlesque, and mock-epic poetry. The literary productions of writers such as Defoe, Swift, Sterne, Pope, Johnson, Burney, and Austen will be considered as a response to and an expression of the tremendous social and political transformations marking the period spanning roughly 1660 through 1818, as England lurched toward modernity.