Studies in Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature and Culture
ENG 7021: Wednesdays 3-5:45 in 0215 State Hall with Lisa Maruca

Contact Information:

Email: lisa.maruca@wayne.edu

Phone:  313.577.7694 (AC office) OR 313.757.0010 (Google Voice/text message)
Office hours/location: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30am-3pm in English Main Office, 9^th Floor, 5057 Woodward; Wednesday, 12:30-2:30 in 10409.3

Course Description: “Media, Markets, and Material Culture”

The first half of the course is an introduction to the variety of new (and newly refurbished) genres, entertainments, knowledge forms, and modes of transmission that flourished in the active print culture of the early eighteenth century. We will study music, theater, the letter, the periodical press, poetry, autobiography and the novel within their economic, political, legal and aesthetic contexts, examining who benefitted from and who resisted the developing literary marketplace of London.  In the second half of the course, we will move outward to look more broadly at the British Empire in the later century. We will discuss aging and unruly bodies, gendered bodies as commodities, slavery and abolitionism, the metropole-colony relationship, and depictions of racial, religious and exotic Others.  Here we will analyze England’s relationship to the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean, not in terms of a static oppressor-victim model, but as a complex discursive dynamic that ultimately allowed for cultural cross-fertilization.

Authors include Gay, Addison, Steele, Montague, Swift, Pope, Johnson, Fielding OR Richardson, Burney, Equiano and others to be determined; we will also read lesser known or anonymous writers, paratextual material, and primary sources such as laws and tracts. Secondary texts will encompass print culture studies and book history; new historical work on intellectual property and authorship; and critical race studies, post-colonial theory, and other approaches to the transatlantic British Empire.

Required Texts: The following can be found at either Barnes and Noble or Mar-Wil.

Srinivas Aravamudan, Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688–1804, 082232315X

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (Norton Critical), 9780393970142

John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (Penguin), 9780140432206

Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters (Broadview), 9781554810420

Erin Mackie, ed. (Addison and Steele), Commerce of Everyday Life, 9780312115975

Alexander Pope, Major Works (Oxford), 9780199537617

Frances Burney, Evelina (Oxford), 9780199536931

Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (Broadview), 9781551116013 Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative (Broadview), 9781551112626

Additional readings posted on Blackboard or available online, as indicated in the syllabus.

Course Requirements: Students will keep a weekly online commonplace book/blog (30%) for ten weeks (500 words/week)—see attached. Each student will also present an 11-page “Following the Footnotes” project (30%)—see below.  For a final project, there will be a choice of writing a traditional seminar paper or (preferably) participating in the collaborative creation of an online site dedicated to the course's topic or editing (30%)—more details forthcoming.  The final 10% comes from regular attendance and vigorous participation—just showing up is not enough

Research and Academic Honesty (plagiarism policy):

You are expected to conduct yourself with personal and professional integrity in all aspects of the course.  Academic dishonesty refers to purposeful plagiarism (copying or paraphrasing without citation) or fraud (e.g., turning a paper in that you did not write).  FRAUDULENT PAPERS WILL RECEIVE AN AUTOMATIC F AND CANNOT BE REVISED.  All cases of plagiarism will be reported to the English Department and kept on file.  Blatant or persistent cases of fraud will be reported to the university officials and can result in expulsion. 

I. Introduction to C18

Week 1. 8/28

• ·         Syllabus, Assignments and Introductions
• ·         Eighteenth Century Overview
• ·         Film?
  
  

II.  Embodiments

Week 2.  9/4   ∞E/Raced Bodies ∞

• ·         Behn, Oroonoko (1-65) plus 75-89, 161-167, 189-198, 232-256
• ·         Aravamudan, 1-70
• ·         Strongly recommended: Humanities Center Brownbag w/ Professor Scrivener, "The Saint Domingue Slave Rebellion and Feminist Reform in John Thelwall's "Daughter of Adoption (1801)," 12:30-1:30pm in 2339 FAB
• Ø  Set up blog and send link to Lisa
• Ø  Sign-up in Class for FtF Project
  
  

Week 3.  9/11  ∞Sound & Stage ∞

• ·         Oroonoko, 120-144 (excerpt from Southerne play)
• ·         Gay, Beggar’s Opera
• ·         Steve Newman, “The Value of ‘Nothing’: Ballads in The Beggar's Opera” (Blackboard)
• Ø  VOTE in class: Clarissa or Tom Jones? Or Daughter of Adoption?
• Ø  FtF presentation on Newman
• Ø  Blog Post 1
  
  

Week 4.  9/18   ∞Hand to Print ∞

• ·         Montagu, Turkish Letters
• ·         Humberto Garcia, excerpt from Islam and the Book (Blackboard)
• ·         Eve Tavor Bannet, excerpt from Empire of Letters  (Blackboard)
• ·         Aravamudan, 159-189
• Ø  Guest Speaker: Rebecca Chung (PhD, Chicago)
• Ø  FtF presentations on Garcia, Bannet, Aravamuden
• Ø  Blog Post 2

Week 5.  9/25   ∞Editing and Archives ∞

• ·         NO CLASS:  Instead, attend Master Class by Professors
• ·         As much as possible of the following conferences/talks (register soon!):
• o   Thursday, September 26, 9:30am-5:30pm: The WSU Symposium on Scholarly Editing and Archival Research ()
• o   Friday, September 27, 9am-3pm: Network Detroit: Digital Humanities Theory and Practice, Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan ()
• o   Friday, September 27,  5pm: Srinivas Aravamudan, “The Cosmopolitan  Humanities and Perpetual Peace” (WSU Humanities Center 20th Anniversary Reception; registration not necessary)
• o   Saturday, September 28: Great Lakes THATCamp  (Humanities and Technology Unconference), Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan ()
• Ø  Blog Post 3
  
  

III.  New Media, New Mores: Innovation and Resistance

Week 6.  10/2   ∞Caffeinating Culture ∞

• ·         Mackie, Commerce of Everyday Life (Addison and Steele), pgs 1-102, 115-148, 169-174, 188-199, 210-216, 319-330, 338-355, 368-371, 379-396, 457-466, 469-471, 482-490,498-504, 539-541
• ·        
• ·         Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article” (Blackboard)
• ·         Erin Mackie, “Being Too Positive about the Public Sphere” (Blackboard)
• ·         Excerpt from Cowan, The Social Life of Coffee (Blackboard)
• Ø  FtF presentations on Mackie, Cowan
• Ø  Blog Post 4
  
  

Week 7.  10/9.  ∞Battlements ∞

• ·         Swift, The Battle of the Books (online)
• ·         Pope, Introduction (ix-xxvi), “A Full and True Account” (124-134) and The Dunciad (411-423, 432-553)
• ·         Paula McDowell, excerpt from Women of Grub Street (Blackboard)
• ·         Recommended: Halsband, “Pope, Lady Mary, and the Court Poems” (online; must log in through WSU  library) [this is easy to read and provides more background on the Pope-Curll events)
• Ø  FtF presentations on McDowell
• Ø  Blog Post 5
  
  

Narratives and Novelties

Week 8.  10/16   ∞Harlots and Hero(in)es ∞

• ·         Hogarth, A Harlot’s Progress, A Rake’s Progress, and Marriage à-la-Mode (Wikipedia—click on images for larger views)
• ·         Tom Jones or Clarissa (abridged)
• Ø  Blog Post 6
  
  

Week 9.  10/23   ∞Material Cultures of the Novel ∞

• ·         Tom Jones or Clarissa
• ·         Rebecca Barr, “Black Transactions: Waste and Abundance In Samuel Richardson's 'Clarissa'” OR Simon Stern, “Tom Jones and the Economics of Copyright”
• ·         FtF presentation on Barr or Stern
• Ø  Blog Post 7
  
  

Week 10.  10/30  ∞Fixed in Print ∞

• ·         Johnson, “Plan of an English Dictionary”, Preface to the Dictionary and Letter to Chesterfield (online)
• ·         Johnson, Rasselas
• ·         Aravamudan, 202-214 (top of page)
• ·        Alvin Kernan, excerpt from Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print (Blackboard) OR Wendy Laura Belcher, Abyssinia’s Samuel Johnson: Ethiopian Thought in the Making of an English Author (Blackboard) 
• Ø FtF presentations on Aravamudan, Kernan or Belcher 
• Ø Blog Post 7 

Economies of Bodies: Metropole, Province and Empire

Week 11.  11/6   ∞Authorship and Entertainments ∞

• ·         Burney, Evelina
• ·         Julie Park, “Pains and Pleasures of the Automaton: Frances Burney's Mechanics

of Coming Out” (Blackboard)

• Ø  FtF presentation on Park
• Ø  Blog Post 8
  
  

Week 12.  11/13   ∞Class Acts and Ideal Men∞

• ·         Evelina, con’t
• ·        

Frances Burney's Evelina” (Blackboard)

• Ø  FtF presentation on Hamilton
• Ø  Blog Post 9
  
  

Week 13.  11/20  ∞Economies and Self-Authoring ∞

• ·         Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative
• ·         Aravamudan 233-288, 326-331
• ·         Andrea Stuart, excerpt from Sugar in the Blood (Blackboard)
• Ø  FtF presentations on Aravamudan, Stuart
• Ø  Blog Post 10
  
  

NO CLASS ON 11/27: Thanksgiving Break—enjoy the holiday!

Week 14.  12/4  ∞Equiano in Eighteenth-Century Studies∞

• ·         Equiano, con’t
• ·        
• ·         John Bugg, “The Other Interesting Narrative: Olaudah Equiano's Public Book Tour” (Blackboard)
• ·          Vincent Carretta and John Bugg, “Deciphering the Equiano Archives” [Letters to the Editor] (Blackboard)
• Ø  FtF presentations on Davidson, Bugg
• Ø  Blog Post 11
  
  

Week 15.  12/11

• Ø  Final Project Presentations
• Ø  Projects due by email

Recommended Reading

Read one or more of the following to obtain a broader background of the period:

Brewer, John. The Pleasures of the Imagination

Langford, Paul. A Polite and Commercial People

Porter, Roy. English Society in the Eighteenth Century

Porter, Roy. The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment

Vickery, Amanda. The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England

More focused works:

Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel

Aravamudan, Srinivas. Enlightenment Orientalism: Resisting the Rise of the Novel

Benedict, Barbara. Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies

Bygrave, Stephen. Uses of Education: Readings in Enlightenment in England

Caretta, Vincent. Equiano, the African

Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837

Ellis, Markman. The Coffee-House: A Cultural History 

Field, Ophelia. The Kit-Kat Club

Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

Fox, Adam. Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500-1700

Gikandi, Simon. Slavery and the Culture of Taste

Hunter, Paul. Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth Century English Fiction

Johns, Adrian, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making

Kernan, Alvin. Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print (Originally published as Printing Technology, Letters, and Samuel Johnson)

Miller, Thomas P. The Formation of College English

Raven, James. The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade

Rogers, Pat.  Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture

Rose, Mark: Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright

Sisken, Clifford and William Warner, eds.  This is Englightenment.

McLaverty, Mark. Pope, Print and Meaning

Tilyard, Stella. The Aristocrats

Todd, Janet. The Sign of Angelica: Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800

Wall, Cynthia Sundberg. The Prose of Things: Transformations of Description in the Eighteenth Century (Chicago, 2006)

Wildermuth, Mark E. Print, Chaos and Complexity: Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Media Culture